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GEOPHYSICS, VOL. 58, NO. 1 (JANUARY 1993), P. 47-66, 8 FIGS., 3 TABLES.
True-amplitude imaging and dip moveout
James L. Black*, Karl L. Schleicher** and Lin
ABSTRACT
True-amplitude seismic imaging produces a threedimensional (3-D) migrated section in which the peak amplitude of each migrated event is proportional to thereflectivity. For a constant-velocity medium, the stan-dard imaging sequence consisting of spherical-diver-gence correction, normal moveout (NMO), dip move-out (DMO), and zero-offset migration produces atrue-amplitude image if the DMO step is done cor-rectly. There are two equivalent ways to derive thecorrect amplitude-preserving DMO. The first is toimprove upon Hale’s derivation of F-K DMO bytaking the reflection-point smear properly into ac-count. This yields a new Jacobian that simply replacesthe Jacobian in Hale’s method. The second way is tocalibrate the filter that appears in integral DMO so asto preserve the amplitude of an arbitrary 3-D dippingreflector. This latter method is based upon the 3-Dacoustic wave equation with constant velocity. Theresulting filter amounts to a simple modification of existing integral algorithms. The new F-K and integralDMO algorithms resulting from these two approachesturn out to be equivalent, producing identical outputswhen implemented in nonaliased fashion. As dip in-creases, their output become progressively larger thanthe outputs of either Hale’s F-K method or the integralmethod generally associated with Deregowski andRocca. This trend can be observed both on model dataand field data.There are two additional results of this analysis,both following from the wave-equation calibration onan arbitrary 3-D dipping reflector. The first is a proof that the entire imaging sequence (not just the DMOpart) is true-amplitude when the DMO is done cor-rectly. The second result is a handy formula showingexactly how the zero-phase wavelet on the final mi-grated image is a stretched version of the zero-phasedeconvolved source wavelet. This result quantita-tively expresses the loss of vertical resolution due todip and offset.
INTRODUCTION
The goal of seismic processing istoproducea true-amplitude estimate of the earth’s reflectivity in its fullymigrated position. For most interpreters, “true-amplitude”means that each migrated event’s peak amplitude is propor-tional to the reflection coefficient, where we use the term“event” to refer to the processed seismic image correspond-ing to a given reflector. Ideally, the proportionality constantbetween peak amplitude and reflectivity should be the samefor every event on the three-dimensional (3-D) section,regardless of the depth, dip, or final wavelet. In this paper,we will explicitly show how to accomplish this goal for thecase of constant velocity and point sources/receivers. Thekey to reaching our goal is making dip-moveout (DMO) anamplitude-preserving process.In this paper, we will assume that the seismic data havebeen processed so as to remove the source signature,instrument response, multiples, ghosts, and noise. The focusof our attention is achieving true-amplitude processing in theseismic imaging steps as shown in Figure 1, when thevelocity is constant. In particular, we will analyze thefollowing familiar 3-D imaging steps, which we call the“standard sequence”:
Presented at the 58th Annual International Meeting, Society of Exploration Geophysicists. Manuscript received by the Editor September 3,
1991; revised manuscript received June 16, 1992.
*Formerly Halliburton Geophysical Services, Dallas, TX; presently International Business Machines Corp., 1505 LBJ Freeway, Dallas, TX
75234.
**Halliburton Geophysical Services, P. O. Box 5019, Sugarland, TX 77487Geophysics Dept., Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, presently International Business Machines Corp., 1505 LBJ Freeway,
Dallas, TX 75234.
© 1993 Society of Exploration Geophysicists. All rights reserved.
47
 
48
Black et al.
1) Spherical-divergence (spreading loss) correction,
2)
Normal-moveout correction (NMO),3) 3-D dip-moveout correction (DMO), and4) 3-D zero-offset (exploding-reflector) migration.We are, of course, not the first to ask how to make thestandard sequence (or something close to it) produce true-amplitude images. The exploding reflector concept (Loe-wenthal et al., 1976) gave an intuitively appealing approachto the kinematics of zero-offset migration, but never fullyaddressed the amplitude question at zero-offset, much less atfinite offset. The introduction of DMO (Deregowski andRocca, 1981) into the sequence in the last decade has finallymade it possible to address the amplitude question forarbitrarily-dipping events at finite offsets. An early attemptwas made by Yilmaz and Claerbout (1980) to decompose thedouble-square-root prestack migration method into NMO,DMO, and zero-offset migration. Likewise Deregowski andRocca (1981) made a preliminary connection between DMOand the double-square-root equation in their landmark pa-per. Finally, Hale (1983) made a much more thorough effortto do the same thing in an unpublished chapter of his Ph.D.thesis. Unfortunately, all three of these efforts fell short of producing a definition of DMO that would allow the standardsequence to simultaneously treat both horizontal and dippingevents’ amplitudes properly.As a consequence, DMO algorithm development retreatedto a more defensible position: guaranteeing that kinematics(i.e., event positioning) were correct for all events, butensuring that amplitudes were correct at most for horizontalevents only. Thus Deregowski and Rocca (1981, pp. 397-8)
and Deregowski (1985, 1986, 1987) proposed various calibra-
tions of the integral DMO method but could make nodefinitive statement on amplitude preservation for arbitrarilydipping data. Hale’s (1984) F-K algorithm handled ampli-tudes reasonably well, and Berg (1984) developed an integraltechnique based upon it. Hale (1991) has recently derived animproved integral DMO from this
F-K 
technique that pre-serves amplitudes on horizontal events even when spatialaliasing of the DMO operator is important. Nevertheless thehandling of dipping-event amplitudes differs among all of these algorithms. Furthermore it turns out that all of thesealgorithms yield amplitudes that are too small for dippingevents.In this paper, we establish three results for true-amplitudeseismic imaging. First of all, we produce a revised DMOtechnique that preserves peak amplitudes on horizontal anddipping data equally well. We explicitly demonstrate theform this technique takes in both
F-K 
and integral imple-mentations in three dimensions. Second, we establish thatthe standard processing sequence is a true-amplitude proce-dure when it includes this revised DMO method. Thus weclear up any lingering doubts about the validity of exploding-reflector migration algorithms and spherical-divergence cor-rections. Finally, we compute an explicit expression for thewavelet-stretch factor that controls the vertical resolution onthe migrated image.The casual reader should skip directly to Table 2 andequations (51) and (52) for a summary of the main results of this paper. For the more dedicated reader, the outline of thispaper follows. In the first two sections we define ournotation and what we mean by true-amplitude processing. Inthe next section we reexamine Hale’s (1984) derivation of two-dimensional (2-D)
F-K 
DMO and make it amplitude-preserving by including reflection-point smear completely,as has previously been presented by one of us (Zhang, 1988).In the following section, we carry out a complete amplitudeanalysis of a planar reflector with arbitrary dip in threedimensions. Using the solution of the 3-D acoustic waveequation as our starting point, we calibrate the entire stan-dard processing sequence to achieve true-amplitude process-ing, as has been previously presented by one of us (Black and Egan, 1988; Black and Wason, 1989). [Note that Black and Egan (1988) contains an error which this work corrects.]Fig. 1. Processing flow diagram for the standard imaging sequence. showing the wave-equation calibrationprocedure for a dipping reflector.
 
True-amplitude Imaging and Dip Moveout
49
The major part of this calibration is the 3-D derivation of amplitude-preserving DMO, this time stated as an integralDMO rather than an
F-K 
DMO. At the end of this section,we show that the entire calibrated standard sequence istrue-amplitude, and we derive an explicit expression for thewavelet-stretch factor. In the section entitled “Summary of DMO Methods,”we use the connection between integraland
F-K 
DMO in Appendix C to conclude that our
 F-K 
andintegral techniques are equivalent to each other. This leadsto Table 2, which summarizes four DMO algorithms: asdescribed in this paper,Hale’s, a generic form of Deregowski and Rocca’s integral method, and the Bleistein-Liner method (Liner, 1989; Bleistein, 1990). In the finalsections, we examine the outputs produced by three of thesefour DMO algorithms acting on model and field data. Weshow that our amplitude-preserving DMO maintains thepeak amplitudes of both horizontal and dipping data, anecessary condition for the entire standard sequence to betrue-amplitude.Much of the development of this paper is contained in fourappendices. Appendix A establishes the kinematic identitiesrelating the DMO times and midpoints. Appendix B containsthe mathematics required to evaluate the stationary-phaseintegral that defines our amplitude-preserving integral DMO.Appendix C details the asymptotic relationship between
F-K 
DMO and integral DMO. Finally Appendix D gives themathematical details necessary to perform Stolt zero-offsetmigration for a 3-D dipping reflector.
NOTATIONAL CONVENTIONS
For the sake of continuity with the existing DMO litera-ture, we have followed Hale’s (1984) notation as much aspossible. For example, we use to denote time on thezero-offset section, However, our focus onamplitude preservation, on three dimensions, and on theentire standard sequence has made it necessary to extendHale’s notation. Thus the midpoint position on the zero-offset section is called rather than y, where we useboldface to indicate a vector quantity. Table 1 summarizesour conventions, listing each processing step, the outputsection from each step, and the planar event time after eachstep. For completeness,the table begins with the step“wave-equation generation’’whose output is the seismicsection that is input to the standard sequence. Note that“Latin” times such as are independent variables servingas arguments, whereas“Greek” times such as aredependent variables expressing the traveltimes of a dippingevent as a function of midpoint. For example, the section
Table 1. Notational conventions, showing the output sectionand the event time following each stage in the standardsequence.
contains an event whose peak amplitude occursat= For the sake of conciseness, we havesuppressed the half-offset argument
h
in all variables.
HOW TO MAKE AMPLITUDE GLOBALLY PROPORTIONALTO REFLECTIVITY
Before going further, we need to clearly define what wemean by“amplitude proportional to reflectivity” in thepresence of band-limited wavelets. This phrase is a littletricky because the zero-phase image wavelet on the finalmigrated section
must vary
from event to event. This varia-tion is illustrated in Figure 2, which shows correct process-ing of two events that have the same reflectivity and thesame deconvolved zero-phase source wavelet but whichhave different image wavelets. The convolved withreflector 1 has a higher bandwidth than the convolvedwith reflector 2. Why? The answer is that nonverticalraypaths cause some of the vertical resolution in the decon-volved source wavelet
w(t)
to be traded for lateral resolution(Wu and Toksöz, 1987). This means that the vertical resolu-tion in the image wavelet is generally lower than in thesource wavelet. It also means that the image wavelet de-pends upon whatever factors influence the raypaths, such asdip, velocity, depth, and offset. It turns out that the best
IMAGE OF TWO EVENTS
WITH SAME REFLECTIVITY
F
IG
.
2. Effect of raypath obliquity on the wavelet. Thedipping event with sloping raypath has a more stretched(lower frequency) image wavelet than the event with avertical raypath. Lower part of figure shows same result inthe frequency domain.
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