Publications

In frontier areas, insufficient information about complex local geology makes building an initial velocity model for seismic data migration difficult. We developed a wave equation tomography method that can be used as an initial velocity model generator to overcome this problem. Since this method requires little a priori information about the local geology, the velocity model it generates is very objective.We applied this method to offshore seismic data and found that the velocity model produced is consistent with the velocity model generated by conventional methods. Local velocity variation within each layer is clearly shown on the tomogram. Added benefits are that the wave equation tomography method requires less user intervention than conventional velocity analysis and may be less computationally expensive.