Seismic reverse time migration based on biaxial wavefield decomposition

Abstract

Seismic images generated by reverse time migration (RTM) are often contaminated by low-wavenumber artifacts. Decomposition of up- and downgoing waves during propagation can effectively reduce these artifacts. However, decomposition along the vertical axis is not sufficient to eliminate the migration artifacts. We introduce biaxial wavefield decomposition to decompose seismic wavefields in the lateral and vertical directions. After decomposition, there are 16 crosscorrelation terms between different components, and there are only four crosscorrelation terms that can be used separately to image flat layers and tilted interfaces. Within these four terms, the remaining artifacts can be easily identified and reduced by other methods, and the resolution can be further improved by adjusting the weights of the four terms. The decomposition method based on the analytic wavefield via the Hilbert transform has been shown to agree with the viscoacoustic wave equation with fractional spatial derivatives. Therefore, this biaxial wavefield decomposition method is suitable for decomposing the wavefields for the attenuation-compensated RTM. The decomposed and recombined migration results can better image a complex subsurface structure with high resolution.