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RESEARCH ARTICLE

Converted-wave guided imaging condition for elastic reverse time migration with wavefield separation

Hyungwook Choi 1 Soon Jee Seol 1 Joongmoo Byun 1 2
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1 Department of Earth Resources and Environmental Engineering, Hanyang University, 222 Wangsimni-ro, Seongdong-gu, Seoul 04763, Korea.

2 Corresponding author. Email: jbyun@hanyang.ac.kr

Exploration Geophysics 48(3) 201-209 https://doi.org/10.1071/EG16003
Submitted: 12 January 2016  Accepted: 13 January 2016   Published: 27 January 2016
Originally submitted to KSEG 8 December 2015, accepted 11 January 2016  

Abstract

Elastic reverse time migration (ERTM), which is capable of using multicomponent seismic data, provides not only an improvement of the P-P image compared to the one derived from acoustic RTM, but also more opportunities to understand the subsurface through converted wave images (P-S, S-P, and S-S images). However, the polarity reversals in P-S and S-P images and cross-talk noises generated in S-P and S-S images degrade the converted wave images of ERTM. To overcome these problems, we derive a new P-S converted wave imaging condition for 2D ERTM based on wavefield separation techniques. The proposed imaging condition, called converted-wave guided (CWG) imaging condition, incorporates an extra term that represents the sign and wavelength of S-waves converted from source wavefields into the zero-lag cross-correlation imaging condition for P-S imaging. The extra term compensates for the polarity reversal of separated S-waves from receiver wavefields because the converted S-waves from source wavefields also have the change in polarity. In addition, since this CWG imaging condition produces images where P- and S-waves from source wavefields and S-waves from receiver wavefields coincide, image resolution is enhanced without generating spurious events. Our approach is motivated by the specific feature of ERTM that generates converted waves at the reflection points (conventional imaging points) when proper elastic models are used. Through a numerical experiment with a simple elastic model, we demonstrate that the proposed CWG imaging condition successfully corrects the polarity reversal and provides higher image resolution. We also test our migration algorithm on a synthetic ocean bottom cable (OBC) dataset created using the Marmousi-II model. The P-S image obtained from CWG imaging condition shows continuous events and improved image resolution.

Key words: converted wave imaging, elastic reverse time migration, imaging condition, multicomponent seismic data, wavefield separation.


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