Theory of 3-D angle gathers in wave-equation seismic imaging

Conclusions

Angle gathers present a natural tool for analyzing velocities and amplitudes in wave-equation imaging. I have discussed two approaches for angle-gather construction. In the first approach, angle gather are constructed on the fly at different depth steps of the wave extrapolation process. In the second approach, angle gathers are extracted from the local-offset gathers after imaging has completed. The second method was previously presented for the 2-D case and for the case of a common-azimuth approximation. Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages. The preference depends on the application and the input data configuration.