Kirchhoff PreSDM interactive dip‐gather stacking and dip illumination panel generation

Abstract

Kirchhoff Pre‐Stack Depth Migration (PreSDM) is used to output image gathers in structure dip angle instead of the traditional offset attributes gathers in sub‐salt areas that are hard to image. These new image gathers can help processors and/or interpreters to better define geological structures through interactively stacking the image gathers in dip within various dip angle ranges based on different interpretations. Illumination panels can also be obtained for structures with different dips. They can be used to determine if observed amplitude anomalies are caused by geology or seismic acquisition and imaging processes. We demonstrate using the Sigsbee 2A synthetic dataset that partial dip‐angle gather stacking and illumination compensation can be used to effectively suppress sub‐salt migration artifacts.