Shot gather continuation

Matthias Schwab

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ABSTRACT

Standard offset continuation transforms a constant offset gather to a gather at a different offset. The new gather is designed to yield the same migrated subsurface image as the original one. Similarly, the shot continuation operator introduced in this article extrapolates shot gathers to new shot locations, while preserving the associated migrated subsurface image. The derivation of the shot continuation method is analogous to the derivation of the offset continuation process. Unfortunately, the shot continuation operator is space and time variant and therefore more expensive than the space invariant offset continuation operator. Synthetic examples demonstrate that the shot continuation method yields shot gathers whose kinematics are correctly predicted. A novel approach for v(x,t) velocity analysis motivates the development of the shot continuation operator.