A Robust Prestack Inversion Algorithm for Interval-Q Measurements from Surface Seismic Data

Measurement of seismic attenuation is affected by spectral interference, which limits the accuracy of standard spectral ratio regressions. Furthermore, heterogeneities and anisotropic effects above the zone of interest complicate the choice of a reference event. We introduce a prestack Q-inversion (PSQI) algorithm which operates in the tau-p domain such that the reference event changes with the slowness of the trace considered. By inverting the spectral ratio data for all of the prestack traces simultaneously, the influence of the interference peaks and notches is reduced. The result of the PSQI approach is a more accurate and precise attenuation measurement. We show the justification for our approach using synthetic data, and then demonstrate the method on a shallow reservoir 3D seismic survey.