Case study: Improving the quality of the seismic reflection image for a Fujian mineral exploration data set with offset-domain common-image gathers

Abstract

Seismic reflection is a proven and effective method commonly used during exploration of deep mineral deposits in Fujian, China. In seismic data processing, rugged depth migration based on wave-equation migration can play a key role in handling surface fluctuations and complex underground structures. Because wave-equation migration in the shot domain cannot output offset-domain common-image gathers in a straightforward way, the use of traditional tools for updating the velocity model and improving image quality can be quite challenging. To overcome this problem, we have used the attribute migration method. This works by sorting the migrated stack results for every single-shot gather into the offset gathers. The value of the offset that corresponds to each image point is obtained from the ratio of the original migration results to the offset-modulated shot-data migration results. A Gaussian function is proposed to map every image point to a certain range of offsets. This helps improve the signal-to-noise ratio, which is especially important in handling low-quality seismic data obtained during mineral exploration. Residual velocity analysis is applied to these gathers to update the velocity model and improve the image quality. The offset-domain common-image gathers are also used directly for real mineral exploration seismic data with rugged depth migration. After several iterations of migration and updating the velocity, our procedure achieves an image quality better than the one obtained with the initial velocity model. The results can help with the interpretation of thrust faults and deep deposit exploration.