Moveout-based wave-equation migration velocity analysis

Abstract:

We propose a new method to perform wave-equation migration velocity analysis using angle-domain common image gathers. Instead of maximizing the image-stack-power objective function directly with respect to the slowness, we link the objective function to the slowness indirectly through an intermediate moveout parameter. Since this approach is robust against the cycle-skipping problem, it produces more reasonable gradients. Also the proposed method does not require explicit picking of the moveout parameters. Our data examples shows the great potential of this method.