Tomography of Diffraction-Based Focusing Operators

Diffractions carry the same kinematic information provided by common focus point operators (CFPOs). Thus CFPO and diffraction time trajectories may be used separately, or combined into a single unified tomography for velocity analysis. Velocity estimation by tomography of CFPOs reduces the depth-velocity ambiguity compared to two-way time tomography. CFPO estimation is complicated where there are event discontinuities and diffractions. This problem is overcome by using the kinematic information in diffractions in near-offset common-offset gathers. The procedure is illustrated using synthetic data, and a single-channel field seismic profile from the Blake Ridge (off the east coast of the United States). The results show the effectiveness of the proposed method for estimation of velocity from single channel seismic data, and for refinement of the velocity field from multichannel data. Both applications are cost-competitive.