Consistent Velocity Model Building - Matching Model to Migration

Recent advances in imaging and computing technology have made prestack wave-equation depth migration feasible in a production environment. However, the state-of-the-art in velocity model building is still based on mainly Kirchhoff prestack depth migration and raybased tomographic inversion. This mismatch between migration algorithm and velocity model will ultimately limit the final image quality. This paper discusses some of the issues around the mismatch of velocity model building and migration tools and other issues that hamper the derivation of an optimal migration velocity model.