Reverse-time migration using wavefield decomposition

Results and discussion

I applied RTM using the imaging conditions proposed in the previous section to a single shot profile corresponding to the 1-D velocity model in Figure 2(a). The same approach was also applied to a synthetic data set derived from a 2-D velocity model windowed from the SEAM model. Because of its complicated structures, this synthetic data can illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed imaging conditions.

I found that the imaging condition that uses only the real parts of the decomposed wavefields (Equations 8 and 9) can produce the same images as the imaging condition that utilizes the complex-valued decomposed wavefields (Equations 17 and 18). Indeed, the difference between the RTM images derived from these two imaging conditions can be seen; however, the difference is negligible with respect to the RTM image. Thus, the imaginary parts have a negligible effect on the decomposed RTM image. Therefore, the imaging condition using only real parts of decomposed wavefields as in Equations 8 and 9 can replace the imaging conditions in Equation 17 and 18.

Reverse-time migration using wavefield decomposition