Kinematic residual prestack migration

John T. Etgen

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ABSTRACT

Using a kinematic approach, it is possible to derive a residual migration operator that converts a constant-offset section migrated with one slowness to a constant-offset section migrated with another slowness. Residual constant-offset migration can be decomposed into the following sequence of processes: 1) residual common-reflection-point gathering or DMO, 2) residual NMO, and 3) residual zero-offset migration. If the residual zero-offset migration part of the operator is ``subtracted" from residual constant-offset migration we are left with a residual NMO+DMO operator that corrects a migrated constant-offset section for the residual NMO and residual common-reflection-point smear associated with a change in migration slowness without performing residual zero-offset migration. This ability to change the migration slowness of the data without moving events around is useful for velocity analysis.