True-amplitude one-way wave equation migration in the mixed domain

One-way wave equation migration is a powerful imaging tool for locating accurately reflectors in complex geologic structures; however, the classical formulation of one-way wave equations does not provide accurate amplitudes for the reflectors. When dynamic information is required after migration, such as studies for amplitude variation with angle or when the correct amplitudes of the reflectors in the zero-offset images are needed, some modifications to the one-way wave equations are required. The new equations, which are called “true-amplitude one-way wave equations,” provide amplitudes that are equivalent to those provided by the leading order of the ray-theoretical approximation through the modification of the transverse Laplacian operator with dependence of lateral velocity variations, the introduction of a new term associated with the amplitudes, and the modification of the source representation. In a smoothly varying vertical medium,the extrapolation of the wavefields with the true-amplitude one-way wave equations simplifies to the product of two separable and commutative factors: one associated with the phase and equal to the phase-shift migration conventional and the other associated with the amplitude. To take advantage of this true-amplitude phase-shift migration, we developed the extension of conventional migration algorithms in a mixed domain, such as phase shift plus interpolation, split step, and Fourier finite difference. Two-dimensional numerical experiments that used a single-shot data set showed that the proposed mixed-domain true-amplitude algorithms combined with a deconvolution-type imaging condition recover the amplitudes of the reflectors better than conventional mixed-domain algorithms. Numerical experiments with multiple-shot Marmousi data showed improvement in the amplitudes of the deepest structures and preservation of higher frequency content in the migrated images.