Fast Method for Amplitude Computation on High Contrast Velocity Models

The amplitude of seismic waves is a very important wave componant. It is usefull for many seismic and seismological applications such as preserved amplitude prestack depth migration or even tomography. In this article we will present a new method to compute amplitudes based on the transport equation. It consists of a combination of two schemes: first for a given point in the medium the amplitude is predicted locally from neighboring points (local scheme) and then a global scheme is applied to propagate amplitudes across the whole medium. For clarity we present the method in a 2D model, extension to 3D models is straight forward. The main feature of this new algorithm is its ability to compute accurate amplitudes in velocity models with very strong contrasts.