Attenuating multiple-related imaging artifacts using combined imaging conditions

Abstract

The objective of prestack depth migration is to position reflectors at their correct subsurface locations. However, migration methods often also generate artifacts along with physical reflectors, which hamper interpretation. These spurious reflectors often appear at different spatial locations in the image depending on which migration method is used. Therefore, we have devised a postimaging filter that combines two imaging conditions to preserve their similarities and to attenuate their differences. The imaging filter is based on combining the two constituent images and their envelopes that were obtained from the complex vertical traces of the images. We have used the method to combine two images resulting from different migration schemes, which produce dissimilar artifacts: a conventional migration method (equivalent to reverse time migration) and a deconvolution-based imaging method. We show how this combination may be exploited to attenuate migration artifacts in a final image. A synthetic model containing a syncline and stochastically generated small-scale heterogeneities in the velocity and density distributions was used for the numerical example. We compared the images in detail at two locations where spurious events arose and also at a true reflector. We found that the combined imaging condition has significantly fewer artifacts than either constituent image individually.