WAVE-FRONT SETS ANALYSIS OF LIMITED APERTURE MIGRATION SECTIONS

Although geophysical literature is quite rich in papers on migration, there are only a few papers that treat LAM (Limited Aperture Migration). Deterministic and stochastic criteria for the reconstruction of reflection interfaces in prestack migration were derived and demonstrated on synthetic and real data examples (a real data set was acquired offshore the Brazilian coast, courtesy of Petrobras). The reconstruction of reflection interfaces in LAM depends on the relative position of "normal bundles," as defined here, and gradients to the reflection interfaces. The derived stochastic criterion relates the variance of "normal bundles" to the variance of slowness in the medium. These criteria will help the geophysicist to identify directly distorted regions caused by LAM and those regions that are correctly migrated.