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Using the Eikonal equation for de-migration: a proposal

It is obvious that this equation in 3-D cannot be solved analytically for any kind of velocity model. Since the Eikonal equation relates the gradient of the traveltime $\tau$ to the velocity structure, several methods have been formulated to study the classical Eikonal equation (3) for a velocity structure sampled at discrete points in a 3-D space (3-D grid) and using finite-difference algorithms: M. Reshef and D. Kosloff 1986 integrate a finite-difference approximation of the Eikonal equation with a Runge-Kutta method; J. Vidale 1988 also uses a finite-difference algorithm but solves directly for traveltimes using a planar or circular wavefront extrapolation; and J. Van Trier and W. Symes 1990 derive a conservation law from the Eikonal equation depicting the first arrival time field.

Each differential term in Eikonal equation (14) can be approximated with finite difference to give the traveltime at a particular point of a grid with respect to the previously calculated traveltimes. To apply a finite-difference scheme to this equation, we need a 3-D grid of velocities, and since I use GOCAD to handle 3-D surfaces and structures, I present in this report a method to compute a 3-D grid of velocities from a GOCAD model Berlioux (1993a).

The aim of this project is to find how we can obtain a de-migration process from this Eikonal equation for time-migration. Nevertheless, to find an ``inverse'' process to the time migration method presented here, it is necessary to understand clearly how it is performed. I will therefore try to operate the time migration on several synthetic models of zero-offset data.


previous up next print clean
Next: CONCLUSIONS Up: USING 3-D EIKONAL EQUATION Previous: Presentation of the 3-D
Stanford Exploration Project
11/17/1997