Estimation of Q from surface-seismic reflection data in data space and image space

Wave-equation-based method

According to its definition, Q is a function of the real and imaginary velocity components

$$Q= -\frac{v_r}{2v_i}.$$ (8)

The wave-equation-based method uses velocity to estimate Q and regards velocity and Q as two variables to be estimated. This method is physically more accurate but is computationally expensive and has trade-offs between the effects on data amplitude of these different parameter classes.