Planned seismic imaging using explicit one-way operators
A method is presented to compare the accuracy and computational cost of explicit one-way extrapolation operators as used in seismic imaging. For a given model, accuracy is measured in terms of lateral positioning error, and cost is calculated relative to the cost of the spatial fast Fourier transform. The result is a planned imaging scheme that achieves the greatest accuracy with respect to the velocity model for a fixed cost. To demonstrate, we use a 2D section of the EAGE/SEG salt model and assemble a suite of the most common operators. The data are imaged using each operator individually, and the results are compared to the result from the plan-based algorithm. The planned image is shown to return improved accuracy for no additional cost.