Towards a Unified Imaging Procedure for 2-D Land Multichannel Seismic Data

We demonstrate that imaging of 2-D multichannel land seismic data can be effectively accomplished by a combination of traveltime inversion and pre-stack depth migration; we refer to the combined process as "the unified imaging". The unified imaging comprises cyclic runs of joint reflection and direct arrival inversion and pre-stack depth migration. From one cycle to another, both the inversion and the migration provide mutual feedbacks that are guided by the geological interpretation. In every cycle, a coefficient of congruence, j, measures the structural similarity of the interfaces from the joint inversion with their corresponding counterparts from the depth migration within the assigned uncertainties. The depth migration in every cycle is performed with the updated velocity model from joint inversion in that cycle. A value of unity for j implies that the unified imaging has converged. For j values grater than unity, the updated velocity model from the joint inversion and the interfaces from the depth migration in a given cycle are used as the initial model and interfaces for joint inversion in the next cycle. We apply the unified imaging to 2-D multichannel seismic data from the Naga Thrust and Fold Belt, India.