oa Applications of Common Reflection Angle Migration

The structural interpretation of prestack depth migrated seismic data is based on stacking full offset flat depth gathers. Full offset stacking for complex subsurface environment can result in a lower signal to noise ratio than a partial angle stack of subsurface angle data. Common Reflection Angle Migration is a ray-based prestack depth migration that generates angle dependent reflectivity depth gathers providing the interpreter with a new way of viewing seismic data. Ray tracing is performed by shooting up-going rays for each subsurface image point with uniform emergence angles, thus multipathing arrivals are taken into account. Technically, this output-driven, upward-shooting approach enables one to compute migration operators that are more accurate than their Kirchhoff counterparts.