Migration-based filtering: Applications to geophysical imaging data

Abstract

Migration is used to collapse “diffractions,” i.e., to focus hyperbolic events that appear in the space-time of a seismic profile — into spots of finite area in the image space. These usually represent scattering objects. However, there are situations in which some of the energy can be focused by migration, and muted without significantly damaging the remaining echoes. Demigration or forward modeling then restores the remaining data, and the removed signals can be rebuilt by subtracting these restored data from the original records. This process can be classified as migration-based filtering. It is demonstrated by synthetic and field data that this filter can be used for suppressing unwanted coherent signals or separating/extracting wavefields of interest: (1) the suppression of ground roll in seismic shot gathers, (2) the suppression of axially guided arrivals in borehole radar profiles, (3) suppressing the direct arrivals to enhance Stoneley-wave reflections in full-waveform sonic logging data, and (4) separating up- and downgoing waves in vertical seismic profiles.