Enhancing common-image gathers
with prestack Stolt residual migration

Paul Sava

paul@sep.stanford.edu

ABSTRACT

Wave-equation migration velocity analysis is a two-step process: first, we estimate the perturbation between a starting image and a better-focused image, and then invert for the perturbation in slowness that explains the perturbation in image obtained in the first step. The key to success is to obtain a sharp image, with flat common-image gathers at every location. In this paper, I show how prestack Stolt residual migration and common-image gathers come together, and lead to a successful image enhancement procedure with which we can transform a given image into a better-focused one.