Seismic Imaging and Illumination with Internal Multiples

Abstract

If singly scattered seismic waves illuminate the entirety of a subsurface structure of interest, standard methods can be applied to image it. It is generally the case, however, that with a combination of restricted acquisition geometry and imperfect velocity models, it is not possible to illuminate all structures with only singly scattered waves. We present an approach to use multiply scattered waves to illuminate structures not sensed by singly scattered waves. It can be viewed as a refinement of past work in which a method to predict artifacts in imaging with multiply scattered waves was developed. We propose an algorithm and carry out numerical experiments, representative of imaging of the bottom and flanks of salt, demonstrating the effectiveness of our approach.