Compensating for visco-acoustic effects with reverse time migration

Yu Zhang, Po Zhang and Houzhu Zhang, CGGVeritas

Summary

The anelastic effects of the earth cause frequency
dependent energy attenuation and phase distortion. It is
desirable to correct such unwanted effects in a prestack
depth migration. Based on the dispersion relation under the
linear attenuation assumption, we derive a visco-acoustic
wave equation in time domain and propose to apply it in a
prestack reverse time migration to compensate for the
anelastic effects in the seismic data. The equation is defined
by a pseudo-differential operator and the energy increases
with frequencies when back propagating the seismic data in
migration. With a regularization process, we show that our
method provides stable and amplitude balanced reverse
time migration images.

Introduction

It has been well observed that the anelastic effects of the
earth cause seismic energy attenuation and wavelet
distortion (Aki and Richards, 1980). For example, gas
trapped in the overburden structures can strongly attenuate
seismic P-waves. As a result, not only the migrated
amplitude below the gas anomaly is dim, but also the
imaging resolution is much reduced due to the high
frequency energy loss and the phase distortion. Therefore it
is important to correct these unwanted effects in seismic
processing and make the final image more interpretable.

Early work to compensate for the seismic absorption was
performed in data domain by an inverse Q-filter (Bickel
and Natarajan, 1985; Hargreaves and Calvert, 1991). Such
a method was based on a one-dimensional backward
propagation and cannot correctly handle the real geological
complexity. Since the anelastic attenuation and dispersion
happen during the wave propagation, it is natural to correct
them in a prestack depth migration. However, common
migration methods usually treat the earth model as a
lossless acoustic medium and only intend to correct the
amplitude effect due to geometric spreading (Bleistein et al.
2001). Mainly two reasons account for this situation. First,
it is difficult to accurately estimate the Q factor from
seismic data. Second, the technology of migrating seismic
data using a visco-acoustic equation or an anelastic
equation has not been well established.

Based on the raytracing tomography algorithm, Xin et al
(2008) proposed a generalized inversion method to estimate
the attenuation loss and to obtain a model for Q. The
analysis is performed on the migrated data by minimizing
the amplitude discrepancies across the common image
gathers. Xie et al (2009) developed a prestack Kirchhoff
inverse Q-migration. They use raytracing to compute the
absorption effects along the ray path and apply
compensation to each individual frequency band of the
image during the migration.

In the literature, much effort has been made to develop an
inverse Q-migration using one-way wave equation
migration (Dai and West, 1994; Yu et al. 2002). One-way
wave equation is formulated in frequency domain so it is
straightforward to take care of the frequency dependent
dissipation. Recently, reverse time migration (RTM) based
on directly solving the two-way wave equation provides a
superior way to image complex geologic regions and has
become a standard migration tool for subsalt imaging,
especially in Gulf of Mexico. To incorporate the
attenuation correction in RTM, we need to formulate a time
domain wave equation to model the visco-acoustic effects,
which turns out to be a difficult task.

Liu et al. (1976) showed that a viscoelastic rheology with
multiple relaxation mechanisms can explain experimental
observations of wave propagations in the earth. Carcione et
al (1988) designed a system of equations of motion and
introduced the memory variables to obviate storing the
entire strain history required by the time convolution. In
this abstract, we derive a pseudo-differential equation to
model viscoaoustic waves based on its dispersion relation
and apply it to reverse time migration to compensate for the
anelastic effects in seismic images. In the numerical
section, we first use a simple example to show our equation
can properly compensate for the frequency dependent
absorption and dispersion effects. Then we provide a real
data example to show how our Q-RTM works on Gulf of
Mexico seismic imaging projects.

Theory

The wave propagation through a linear visco-acoustic
medium can be described by the following dispersion
relation (Kjartansson, 1979)
v
i
v
k
| |
)
2
tan(
e t e
=
, (1)
where k

and e

are the spatial wavenumber and the
circular temporal frequency, respectively; is defined by
Q Q t t

1
)
1
( tan
1
1
~ =

, (2)
with the quality factor
Q
varying with the spatial locations.
Unlike the conventional acoustic equation, the velocity v

in equation (1) is frequency dependent, i.e.
Compensate visco-acoustic effects with RTM

e
e
0
0
v v =
, (3)
where
0
v

is the wave speed for the given reference
frequency
0
e
.

To derive a visco-acoustic wave equation based on (1)-(3),
we square both sides of equation (1) and assume the
attenuation is small (
1 / 1 << Q
). After some algebraic
manipulations, we obtain
|
|
.
|

\
|
~
2
0
2
0
2
2
0 2
v Q
i
v
k
e
e e
e
e

. (4)
To further simplify the dispersion relation (4), we notice
that

e
e e e
e
e

~ + =
1
0
1
0
0
2
0
0
1
1
v Q v
k
, (5)
or

e
e

=
1
1
0
0
k v
. (6)
With the help of (5) and (6), equation (4) can be rewritten
as
0
1
2
0
0
1
1
0
0 2
=

e e
e
e
k v k v
Q
i
. (7)
The dispersion equation (7) leads to the following partial
differential equation in time domain
0
2
2
2
=
|
|
.
|

\
|
u +
c
c u
+
c
c
p
t Q t
, (8)
where uis a pseudo-differential operator in the space
domain defined by

e

|
|
.
|

\
|
A
= u
1
1
0
2
0
v
, (9)
and
2
2
2
2
2
2
z y x c
c
+
c
c
+
c
c
= A
is the 3-D Laplacian operator.
Here we attempt to strictly follow the dispersion relation
(1), and the equation (8) we have derived appears more
complicated than the one given in Zhang et al (2003).

To ease the implementation, we define the operator
u
= A
Q
t
t
e
2
, (10)
and introduce the normalized wavefield
) ; , , ( ) ; , , ( t z y x p t z y x q
t
A =
. (11)
Substituting (11) into (8), we remove the term with the first
temporal derivative and get the following wave equation
0
2
) (
2
1 2
2
2
=
(
(

|
|
.
|

\
| u
A u A +
c
c

q
Q
t
t
t t
, (12)
which is similar to the conventional acoustic equation
0
2
0 2
2
=
(

A
c
c
p v
t
. (13)
Equation (13) describes the frequency dependent phase
dispersion caused by the anelasticity effects. To recover the
pressure wavefield, we need to compensate for the
amplitude change after the propagation of q

is done
) ; , , ( ) ; , , (
1
t z y x q t z y x p
t

A =
. (13)
By introducing the transform (11), we actually decouple the
effects of amplitude attenuation and phase dispersion.

We have derived the wave equation to model visco-
acoustic propagation. To compensate for the absorption
effects in the image, we propose the following reverse time
migration algorithm (Zhang and Sun, 2009):
1. Forward propagate the wavefield
F
q
from the source

|
.
|

\
|
A = =
=
(
(

|
|
.
|

\
| u
A u A +
c
c
}

, ) ( ) ( ) ; 0 , , (
, 0 ) ; (
2
) (
0
1
2
2 1
2
2
t
t s F
F t t
ds s f x x t z y x q
t x q
Q
t
t

o
(14)
where
) (t f
is the source wavelet.
2. Backward propagate the wavefield
B
q
by
reducing time from the recorded seismic data
) ; , ( t y x D

on the surface

A = =
=
(
(

|
|
.
|

\
| u
A u A +
c
c

). ; , ( ) ; 0 , , (
, 0 ) ; (
2
2
1 2
2
2
t y x D t z y x q
t x q
Q t
t B
B t t

(15)
3. Apply the cross-correlation imaging condition
}
A A =

dt t x q t x q x R
F t B t
)) ; ( ))( ; ( ( ) (
1

(16)
to get the image and compensate for the amplitude
loss.

Numerical experiments and examples

The first example is designed to prove that the wave
equation (8) we have derived can correctly handle both the
amplitude attenuation and the phase dispersion caused by
the anelasticity. We use a Ricker wavelet with 10hz peak
frequency as the input at time 0s (Figure 1). Given velocity
s m v / 1000
0
=
at the reference frequency
hz 10
0
= e
and
100 = Q
, we use the analytical formula (1) to compute the
wavelet propagation through the anelastic medium at time
5s and show the attenuated amplitude and spectrum in
Figure 2 as the dashed curves. Then we back propagate the
Compensate visco-acoustic effects with RTM

distorted wavelet from time 5s to 0s by numerically solving
equation (8) and depict the results as the solid lines in
Figure 2. It is clear that we almost exactly recover the
original wavelet by using equation (8). In the next step, we
test our formulation in an extreme case. We keep all the
model parameters the same, except changing
Q
to 20 .
After 5s propagation, most of the frequencies are
dramatically attenuated (dashed curves in Figure 3). For
example, at the peak frequency 10hz, the amplitude drops
about 2560 times. If we directly use equation (8) to back
propagate, the resulting wavelet explodes the numerical
noise at high frequency and appears as noise in the output
with tremendous amplitude. To solve the problem, we have
to stabilize the equation (8) by adding regularization terms.
The solid curves in Figure 3 show a stably recovered result
after regularization. In this example, we can only faithfully
recover some low frequency components by an inverse Q
back propagation.



Figure 1: A Ricker wavelet with peak amplitude at 10hz (left) and its spectrum (right).



Figure 2: The distorted wavelet (dashed curves) computed by the analytical formula (1) with
100 = Q
and the recovered wavelet (solid curves)
computed by the numerical solution from (8). Left shows the time domain wavelets. Right shows their frequency spectrums.

`
Figure 3: The distorted wavelet (dashed curves) computed by the analytical formula (1) with
20 = Q
and the recovered wavelet (solid curves)
computed by the regularized numerical solution from (8). Left shows the time domain wavelets. For display purpose, the amplitude of the
distorted wavelet is amplifies by 10 times. Right shows their frequency spectrums.

To apply our method in Gulf of Mexico, we need to make
our algorithm handle complex velocity models. Here we
show an example from Alaminos Canyon, where some gas
hydrate saturated sand has formed in the shallow
Compensate visco-acoustic effects with RTM

sedimentary layers. It was reported that when the gas
hydrate is buried under deep water with relatively low
temperature and under high pressure, it behaves like the ice
(Ruppel et al., 2008). Therefore, we expect to see a low
velocity zone defined by strong reflectors in the shallow
depth to indicate the gas hydrate pocket and a dim zone
right bellow it (Figure 4). The size and shape of this dim
zone vary over the offsets and prohibit us from applying
AVO analysis to deeper targets.


Figure 4: An example of shallow gas hydrate pockets on the near
offset image (the area circled by the solid line) in Alaminos
Canyon. It causes the amplitude attenuation and generates the dim
zone marked by the dashed lines.

To improve the image, a tomographic inversion (Xin et al.
2009) is applied to the offset domain common image
gathers to estimate the Q model. We migrate the seismic
data with a conventional RTM and a Q-RTM as define by
equations (14)-(16). The comparison is shown in Figure 5.
With the Q-RTM, the structures under the anomaly are
more prominent and the migrated amplitude is better
balanced. A Fourier analysis of the migrated section shows
that in the dim zone, the high frequencies are boosted and
the phases of migrated events are also slightly changed due
to the anelastic compensation embedded in Q-RTM.

Conclusions

Directly compensating the anelastic effects in a prestack
depth migration is an attractive but difficult task. We have
derived a visco-acoustic wave equation and used it in a
reverse time migration to correct the frequency dependent
absorption and phase distortion. The formulation in time
domain appears more complicated than that in the
frequency domain which adds computational cost. Also,
back propagating a visco-acoustic wavefield by reducing
time causes the high frequency amplitude to increase and
may lead to numerical instability. However, the instability
is linear and can be controlled by a regularization process.
As we show in this abstract, the method we have developed
can correctly model the anelastic phenomena and can be
used in a reverse time migration to improve the image
quality. Numerical examples in Gulf of Mexico show that a
stable Q-RTM is achievable for imaging complex
structures and balancing the migrating amplitude below the
overburden.

Acknowledgments

We thank our colleagues in CGGVeritas US Imaging for
their support to this work, especially Jerry Young, Tony
Huang, Yan Huang and Yongping Chen. We thank Yi Xie
and Kefeng Xin in CGGVeritas Singapore Research for
their helpful discussion. Also we thank Bruce Ver West and
Sheng Xu for their help with this abstract.


Figure 5: A comparison of conventional RTM (left) and Q-RTM (right) on an Alaminos Canyon project.


Compensate visco-acoustic effects with RTM

References
Aki, K., and P. G. Richards, 1980, Quantitative seismology: W.H. Freeman & Co.
Bickel, S. H., and R. R. Natarajan. 1985, Plane-wave Q deconvolution: Geophysics, 50, 1426-1439.
Bleistein, N., J. K. Cohen, and J. W. Stockwell, 2001, Mathematics of multidimensional seismic inversion: Springer Publishing
Co.
Carcione, J. M., D. Kosloff, and R Kosloff, 1988, Viscoacoustic wave propagation simulation in the earth, Geophysics,
Geophysics, 53:6, 769-777
Dai, N., and West, G.F., 1994, Inverse Q migration: 64
th
Annual International Meeting, SEG, Expanded Abstract, 1418-1421.
Hargreaves, N.D. and A. J. Calvert, 1991, Inverse Q filtering by Fourier transform: Geophysics, 56, 519-527.
Kjartansson, E., 1979, Constant Q-wave propagation and attenuation: J. Geophys. Res., 84, 4737-4748.
Liu, H. P., D. L. Anderson, and H. Kanamori, 1976, Velocity dispersion due to anelasticity: implications for seismology and
mantle composition: Geophys. J. Roy. Astr. Sot., Vol. 47,41-58.
Ruppel, C., R. Boswell, and E. Jones, 2008, Scientific results from Gulf of Mexico gas hydrates joints industry project leg 1
drilling: introduction and overview, Marine and Petroleum Geology, 25, 819-829.
Xie, Y., K. Xin, J. Sun, and C. Notfors, 2009, 3D prestack depth migration with compensation for frequency dependent
absorption and dispersion: 79
th
Annual International Meeting, SEG, Expanded Abstracts, 29192922.
Xin, K., B. Hung, S. Birdus, and J. Sun, 2008, 3D tomographic amplitude inversion for compensating amplitude attenuation in
the overburden: 78
th
Annual International Meeting, SEG, Expanded Abstracts, 32393243.
Yu, Y., R. S. Lu, and ang M. D. Deal, 2002, Compensation for the effects of shallow gas attenuation with viscoacoustic wave-
equation migration: 72
nd
Annual International Meeting, SEG, Expanded Abstracts, 2062-2065.
Zhang, H. , G. A. McMechan, and J. Stein, 2003, True amplitude wave equation migration: 73
rd
Annual International Meeting,
913-916.
Zhang, Y., and J. Sun, 2009, Practical issues of reverse time migration: true-amplitude gathers, noise removal and harmonic-
source encoding, First Break, Vol. 26, 19-25.