AVA analysis and geological dip estimation via two-way wave-equation based extended images

Abstract

In this paper, we present an efficient way to compute extended images for all subsurface offsets without explicitly calculating the source and receiver wavefields for all the sources. Because the extended images contain all possible subsurface offsets, we compute the angle-domain image gathers by selecting the sub-surface offset that is aligned with the local dip. We also propose a method to compute the local dip information directly from common-image-point gathers. To assess the quality of the angle-domain common-image-points gathers we compute the angle-dependent reflectivity coefficients and compare them with theoretical reflectivity coefficients yielded by the (linearized) Zoeppritz equations for a few synthetic models.