TTI wave-equation migration for Canadian Foothills depth imaging

Abstract

In order to achieve good imaging in complexly thrusted areas such as the Canadian Foothills, several key issues must be addressed: the presence of very rough surface topography, structural complexity, and anisotropy with a tilted symmetry axis. To image structural complexity with greater accuracy than depth migration can typically accomplish at present, one must move beyond ray-based Kirchhoff methods to techniques employing a full wavefield description, such as wave-equation migration, and these techniques must be extended to handle propagation through tilted media and migration from topography.