Amplitude Preservation for PSDM Processing

As seismic exploration moves to more complex and challenging geologic environments, Anisotropic Prestack Depth Migration is becoming the standard imaging technology. At the same time, there is high interest to use seismic amplitudes in these complex environments for risk assessment and reservoir characterization, objectives that require accurate amplitude preserving prestack depth migration. In this paper we review recent advances made to ensure depth migration algorithms maintain the quality of relative amplitudes. We verify with simple synthetics the amplitude response of Reverse Time Migration, Adaptive Beam Migration and Kirchhoff Migration algorithms, and demonstrate how these can be used successfully, under controlled circumstances, for AVO/AVA and Absolute Acoustic Inversion in media with lateral velocity variations.