Reducing artifacts of elastic reverse time migration by the deprimary technique

Geophysics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 83 (6) ◽  
pp. S569-S577 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yang Zhao ◽  
Houzhu Zhang ◽  
Jidong Yang ◽  
Tong Fei
Keyword(s):  
Complex Function ◽  
Noise Removal ◽  
Pure Mode ◽  
Reverse Time ◽  
Reverse Time Migration ◽  
S Wave ◽  
Imaging Condition ◽  
Velocity Models ◽  
Time Migration ◽  
Wavefield Decomposition

Using the two-way elastic-wave equation, elastic reverse time migration (ERTM) is superior to acoustic RTM because ERTM can handle mode conversions and S-wave propagations in complex realistic subsurface. However, ERTM results may not only contain classical backscattering noises, but they may also suffer from false images associated with primary P- and S-wave reflections along their nonphysical paths. These false images are produced by specific wave paths in migration velocity models in the presence of sharp interfaces or strong velocity contrasts. We have addressed these issues explicitly by introducing a primary noise removal strategy into ERTM, in which the up- and downgoing waves are efficiently separated from the pure-mode vector P- and S-wavefields during source- and receiver-side wavefield extrapolation. Specifically, we investigate a new method of vector wavefield decomposition, which allows us to produce the same phases and amplitudes for the separated P- and S-wavefields as those of the input elastic wavefields. A complex function involved with the Hilbert transform is used in up- and downgoing wavefield decomposition. Our approach is cost effective and avoids the large storage of wavefield snapshots that is required by the conventional wavefield separation technique. A modified dot-product imaging condition is proposed to produce multicomponent PP-, PS-, SP-, and SS-images. We apply our imaging condition to two synthetic models, and we demonstrate the improvement on the image quality of ERTM.

Isotropic elastic reverse time migration using the phase- and amplitude-corrected vector P- and S-wavefields

Geophysics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 83 (6) ◽  
pp. S489-S503 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jidong Yang ◽  
Hejun Zhu ◽  
Wenlong Wang ◽  
Yang Zhao ◽  
Houzhu Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Helmholtz Decomposition ◽  
Pure Mode ◽  
Reverse Time ◽  
Reverse Time Migration ◽  
S Wave ◽  
Imaging Condition ◽  
Computational Costs ◽  
Time Migration ◽  
Wavefield Separation ◽  
Dot Product

In elastic reverse time migration (RTM), wavefield separation is an important step to remove crosstalk artifacts and improve imaging quality. State-of-the-art techniques for wavefield separation in isotropic elastic media include using the Helmholtz decomposition and introducing an auxiliary wave equation. Although these two approaches produce pure-mode vector wavefields with correct amplitudes, phases, and physical units, their computational costs are still high under current computational capability, especially for 3D large-scale problems. Based on the P- and S-wave dispersion relations, we have developed an efficient wavefield separation strategy for elastic RTM. Instead of solving a vector Poisson’s equation in the Helmholtz decomposition, we modify the phases of source wavelet as well as multicomponent records and scale the amplitudes of extrapolated wavefields with the squares of P- and S-wave velocities. This operation allows us to produce vector P- and S-wavefields with the same phases and amplitudes as the input coupled wavefields while significantly reducing computational costs. With the separated vector wavefields, we implemented a modified dot-product imaging condition for elastic RTM. In comparison with the previously proposed dot-product imaging condition, this modified imaging condition enables us to eliminate the effects of multiplication with a cosine function and hence produces migrated images with accurate amplitudes. Several 2D and 3D numerical examples are used to demonstrate the feasibility and robustness of our method for imaging complex subsurface structures.

Vector-based elastic reverse time migration based on scalar imaging condition

Geophysics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. S111-S127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qizhen Du ◽  
ChengFeng Guo ◽  
Qiang Zhao ◽  
Xufei Gong ◽  
Chengxiang Wang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Methods ◽  
Polarity Reversal ◽  
Reverse Time ◽  
Reverse Time Migration ◽  
S Wave ◽  
Converted Wave ◽  
Imaging Condition ◽  
Time Migration ◽  
Wavefield Separation ◽  
Wave Modes

The scalar images (PP, PS, SP, and SS) of elastic reverse time migration (ERTM) can be generated by applying an imaging condition as crosscorrelation of pure wave modes. In conventional ERTM, Helmholtz decomposition is commonly applied in wavefield separation, which leads to a polarity reversal problem in converted-wave images because of the opposite polarity distributions of the S-wavefields. Polarity reversal of the converted-wave image will cause destructive interference when stacking over multiple shots. Besides, in the 3D case, the curl calculation generates a vector S-wave, which makes it impossible to produce scalar PS, SP, and SS images with the crosscorrelation imaging condition. We evaluate a vector-based ERTM (VB-ERTM) method to address these problems. In VB-ERTM, an amplitude-preserved wavefield separation method based on decoupled elastic wave equation is exploited to obtain the pure wave modes. The output separated wavefields are both vectorial. To obtain the scalar images, the scalar imaging condition in which the scalar product of two vector wavefields with source-normalized illumination is exploited to produce scalar images instead of correlating Cartesian components or magnitude of the vector P- and S-wave modes. Compared with alternative methods for correcting the polarity reversal of PS and SP images, our ERTM solution is more stable and simple. Besides these four scalar images, the VB-ERTM method generates another PP-mode image by using the auxiliary stress wavefields. Several 2D and 3D numerical examples are evaluated to demonstrate the potential of our ERTM method.

Imaging conditions for elastic reverse time migration

Geophysics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. S95-S111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Zhang ◽  
Ying Shi
Keyword(s):  
Decomposition Method ◽  
Inner Product ◽  
Reverse Time ◽  
Reverse Time Migration ◽  
S Wave ◽  
Imaging Condition ◽  
Subsurface Structures ◽  
Time Migration ◽  
Imaging Conditions ◽  
Wave Modes

Elastic reverse time migration (RTM) has the ability to retrieve accurately migrated images of complex subsurface structures by imaging the multicomponent seismic data. However, the imaging condition applied in elastic RTM significantly influences the quality of the migrated images. We evaluated three kinds of imaging conditions in elastic RTM. The first kind of imaging condition involves the crosscorrelation between the Cartesian components of the particle-velocity wavefields to yield migrated images of subsurface structures. An alternative crosscorrelation imaging condition between the separated pure wave modes obtained by a Helmholtz-like decomposition method could produce reflectivity images with explicit physical meaning and fewer crosstalk artifacts. A drawback of this approach, though, was that the polarity reversal of the separated S-wave could cause destructive interference in the converted-wave image after stacking over multiple shots. Unlike the conventional decomposition method, the elastic wavefields can also be decomposed in the vector domain using the decoupled elastic wave equation, which preserves the amplitude and phase information of the original elastic wavefields. We have developed an inner-product imaging condition to match the vector-separated P- and S-wave modes to obtain scalar reflectivity images of the subsurface. Moreover, an auxiliary P-wave stress image can supplement the elastic imaging. Using synthetic examples with a layered model, the Marmousi 2 model, and a fault model, we determined that the inner-product imaging condition has prominent advantages over the other two imaging conditions and generates images with preserved amplitude and phase attributes.

An effective imaging condition for reverse-time migration using wavefield decomposition

Geophysics ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. S29-S39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Faqi Liu ◽  
Guanquan Zhang ◽  
Scott A. Morton ◽  
Jacques P. Leveille
Keyword(s):  
Low Frequency ◽  
Real Data ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
High Amplitude ◽  
Reverse Time ◽  
Reverse Time Migration ◽  
Imaging Condition ◽  
Velocity Models ◽  
Time Migration ◽  
Computationally Intensive

Reverse-time migration (RTM) exhibits great superiority over other imaging algorithms in handling steeply dipping structures and complicated velocity models. However, low-frequency, high-amplitude noises commonly seen in a typical RTM image have been one of the major concerns because they can seriously contaminate the signals in the image if they are not handled properly. We propose a new imaging condition to effectively and efficiently eliminate these specific noises from the image. The method works by first decomposing the source and receiver wavefields to their one-way propagation components, followed by applying a correlation-based imaging condition to the appropriate combinations of the decomposed wavefields. We first give the physical explanation of the principle of such noises in the conventional RTM image. Then we provide the detailed mathematical theory for the new imaging condition. Finally, we propose an efficient scheme for its numerical implementation. It replaces the computationally intensive decomposition with the cost-effective Hilbert transform, which significantly improves the efficiency of the imaging condition. Applications to various synthetic and real data sets demonstrate that this new imaging condition can effectively remove the undesired low-frequency noises in the image.

scholarly journals A causal imaging condition for reverse time migration using the Discrete Hilbert transform and its efficient implementation on GPU

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. 894-912
Author(s):  
Feipeng Li ◽  
Jinghuai Gao ◽  
Zhaoqi Gao ◽  
Xiudi Jiang ◽  
Wenbo Sun
Keyword(s):  
Image Quality ◽  
Hilbert Transform ◽  
Real Data ◽  
Processing Unit ◽  
Reverse Time ◽  
Reverse Time Migration ◽  
Discrete Hilbert Transform ◽  
Imaging Condition ◽  
Time Migration ◽  
Wavefield Decomposition

Abstract Reverse time migration (RTM) has shown a significant advantage over other imaging algorithms for imaging complex subsurface structures. However, low-wavenumber noise severely contaminates the image, which is one of the main issues in the RTM algorithm. To attenuate the undesired low-wavenumber noise, the causal imaging condition based on wavefield decomposition has been proposed. First, wavefield decompositions are performed to separate the wavefields as up-going and down-going wave components, respectively. Then, to preserve causality, it constructs images by correlating wave components that propagate in different directions. We build a causal imaging condition in this paper. Not only does it consider the up/down wavefield decomposition, but it also applies the decomposition on the horizontal direction to enhance the image quality especially for steeply dipping structures. The wavefield decomposition is conventionally achieved by the frequency-wavenumber (F-K) transform that is very computationally intensive compared with the wave propagation process of the RTM algorithm. To improve the efficiency of the algorithm, we propose a fast implementation to perform wavefield separation using the discrete Hilbert transform via the Graphics Processing Unit. Numerical tests on both the synthetic models and a real data example demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method and the efficiency of the optimized implementation scheme. This new imaging condition shows its ability to produce high image quality when applied to both the RTM stack image and also the angle domain common image gathers. The comparison of the total elapsed time for different methods verifies the efficiency of the optimized algorithm.

Reverse time migration of multiples: Reducing migration artifacts using the wavefield decomposition imaging condition

Geophysics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 82 (4) ◽  
pp. S307-S314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yibo Wang ◽  
Yikang Zheng ◽  
Qingfeng Xue ◽  
Xu Chang ◽  
Tong W. Fei ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Complex Function ◽  
Synthetic Data ◽  
Velocity Model ◽  
High Amplitude ◽  
Frequency Noise ◽  
Reverse Time ◽  
Reverse Time Migration ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Time Migration ◽  
Wavefield Decomposition

In the implementation of migration of multiples, reverse time migration (RTM) is superior to other migration algorithms because it can handle steeply dipping structures and offer high-resolution images of the complex subsurface. However, the RTM results using two-way wave equation contain high-amplitude, low-frequency noise and false images generated by improper wave paths in migration velocity model with sharp velocity interfaces or strong velocity gradients. To improve the imaging quality in RTM of multiples, we separate the upgoing and downgoing waves in the propagation of source and receiver wavefields. A complex function involved with the Hilbert transform is used in wavefield decomposition. Our approach is cost effective and avoids the large storage of wavefield snapshots required by the conventional wavefield separation technique. We applied migration of multiples with wavefield decomposition on a simple two-layer model and the Sigsbee 2B synthetic data set. Our results demonstrate that the proposed approach can improve the image generated by migration of multiples significantly.

Multidirectional-vector-based elastic reverse time migration and angle-domain common-image gathers with approximate wavefield decomposition of P- and S-waves

Geophysics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. S57-S79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chen Tang ◽  
George A. McMechan
Keyword(s):  
Wave Mode ◽  
Reverse Time ◽  
Reverse Time Migration ◽  
S Wave ◽  
S Waves ◽  
Time Migration ◽  
Mode Separation ◽  
Reflection Image ◽  
Wavefield Decomposition ◽  
Imaging Conditions

Elastic reverse time migration (E-RTM) has limitations when the migration velocities contain strong contrasts. First, the traditional scheme of P/S-wave mode separation is based on Helmholtz’s equations, which ignore the conversion between P- and S-waves at the current separation time. Thus, it contains an implicit assumption of the constant shear modulus and requires smoothing the heterogeneous model to approximately satisfy a locally constant condition. Second, the vector-based imaging condition needs to use the reflection-image normal, and it also cannot give the correct polarity of the PP image in all possible conditions. Third, the angle-domain common-image gathers (ADCIGs) calculated using the Poynting vectors (PVs) do not consider the wave interferences that happen at each reflector. Therefore, smooth models are often used for E-RTM. We relax this condition by proposing an improved data flow that involves three new contributions. The first contribution is an improved system of P/S-wave mode separation that considers the converted wave generated at the current time, and thus it does not require the constant-shear-modulus assumption. The second contribution is the new elastic imaging conditions based on multidirectional vectors; they can give the correct image polarity in all possible conditions without knowledge of the reflection-image normal. The third contribution is two methods to calculate multidirectional propagation vectors (PRVs) for RTM images and ADCIGs: One is the elastic multidirectional PV, and the other uses the sign of wavenumber-over-frequency ([Formula: see text]) ratio obtained from an amplitude-preserved approximate-propagation-angle-based wavefield decomposition to convert the particle velocities into multidirectional PRVs. The robustness of the improved data flow is determined by several 2D numerical examples. Extension of the schemes into 3D and amplitude-preserved imaging conditions is also possible.

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