Wavefront Construction Kirchhoff Migration with Ray-Amplitude Corrections

Abstract

Kirchhoff migration using ray tracing travel times has been a popular imaging method for many years. There are significant limitations in the ability of Kirchhoff migration using only first arrivals to reliably image regions of complex structure. Thus, new methods for imaging have been sought. One approach for improving imaging capability is to use ray tracing methods that allow the calculation of multiple-valued travel time tables to be used in migration. Additional improvements in ray-based imaging methods may be obtained by including amplitudes and phases of rays calculated using some ray tracing approach. One approach for calculating multiple-valued travel time tables along with estimates of amplitudes and phases is the use of wavefront construction ray tracing. We introduce our wavefront construction-based migration algorithm and present some example images obtained using the method. We compare the images obtained with those obtained using a dual-domain wave-equation migration method that we call Extended Local Rytov Fourier migration method.