3-D Inversion of Seismic Reflection Data Using Dynamic Ray Tracing

Possible applications of the dynamic ray tracing in the 3-D Born and Kirchhoff' inversion of seismic reflection data are discussed. It is snown that the most important quantities in the inversion integrals, such as the Beylkin determinant and the amplitudes of the ray theory Green functions, can be determined using the dynamic ray tracing procedure. The dynamic ray tracing can be simply performed along known rays in a very general, laterally varying layered background medium. As the cost of the dynamic ray tracing is merely a small percentage of the cost of the standart two-point ray tracing, the authors believe that the inversion algorithms which use dynamic ray tracing, will be useful in the inversion. They will find valuable applications particularly in complex 3-D structures.