High Resolution Imaging by Wave Equation Reflectivity Inversion

We discuss a wave equation solution for broadband imaging of seismic data. The new methodology poses depth migration as a wave equation reflectivity inversion; enhancing the resolution and balancing the wave number content of the depth migrated images. The method explicitly computes the point spread functions (PSF) by wave equation modelling and migration of discretely sampled point scatterers. The reflectivity function is recovered by solving a linear system of equations that deconvolves the multidimensional PSF from the migrated image. The implementation is efficient and effectively incorporates the spatial variability of the PSF. Results from synthetic and field data examples demonstrate the improvements in spatial resolution after the wave equation reflectivity inversion.