Velocity model building with wave equation migration velocity focusing analysis

Author(s):  
Morgan P. Brown ◽  
Joseph H. Higginbotham ◽  
Robert G. Clapp
Author(s):  
Xuejian Liu ◽  
Lianjie Huang ◽  
Zongcai Feng ◽  
George El-kaseeh ◽  
Robert Will ◽  
...  

Summary Wave-equation migration velocity analysis (WEMVA) is an image-domain inversion method for velocity model building. Automatic plane-wave WEMVA (PWEMVA) calculates the moveouts of plane-wave common-image gathers (CIGs) by searching a best-fitting parabola with semblance analysis and back-projects residual CIG moveouts into wavefield wavepaths with a reflection tomographic kernel. However, 3D PWEMVA is very computationally expensive because 3D reflection tomographic inversion requires at least five 3D reverse-time migrations per iteration and stores two types of source wavefields at model boundaries. We develop a joint inline and crossline PWEMVA method for efficient 3D velocity model building. We alternatively implement the inline and crossline PWEMVAs with a constraint for each other, in which we iteratively construct the 3D velocity model update through 1D spline interpolation of 2D gradients. The inline and crossline joint inversion is practical since PWEMVA only inverts for low-wavenumber velocity perturbations along wavepaths, and the method can take less than one per cent of the computational cost of full 3D PWEMVA. To construct unaliased plane-waves for our joint inline and crossline PWEMVA, we develop a 3D data interpolation method in the frequency-wavenumber (FK) domain to recover regularly and randomly missing traces. The method minimizes the misfit on sufficiently localized data subsets with iterative optimal step-lengths and a gradient preconditioner that iteratively selects dominant dips along different azimuths. In numerical experiments, we use a 3D synthetic seismic dataset and a land 3D field seismic dataset acquired at the Farnsworth CO2-EOR [Enhanced Oil Recovery] field to demonstrate the efficacy of our velocity model building and data interpolation methods.


Geophysics ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 72 (5) ◽  
pp. U67-U73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Soubaras ◽  
Bruno Gratacos

In recent years, wave-equation migration has greatly enhanced imaging in complex velocity models. However, velocity model building is still dependent on ray-theory approximations. We propose a full wave-equation methodology for velocity model building based on the nonlinear inversion of a semblance criterion with respect to the velocity field. A newly described type of migration, called the modulated-shot migration, is used to obtain the necessary gathers, which are indexed in surface angle. The semblance of these gathers, after spatial averaging, is used as the cost function. This methodology is shown to successfully image the Marmousi model and the subsalt part of the Sigsbee model, especially in terms of focusing, which is as good as with the true model, but also in terms of depthing which is enhanced compared with the initial model. Realistic constraints are used in terms of minimum frequency, maximum offset, and crudeness of the starting model. A key point in the success of this methodology is the multiscale approach wherein the iterations are started on a coarse scale, and ended at a finer scale.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document