Retrieving detailed and accurate images of targets that lie beneath or behind unknown complex overburdens or obstacles is a highly challenging problem in waveform-based imaging, such as in seismic, acoustic or radar applications. This problem is particularly difficult when experimental limitations are such that the medium in question cannot be fully surrounded by both by sources and receivers, thus only limited aperture, one-sided scattered-wave data are available. Overcoming some of the issues arising from having one-sided data, we will present an imaging framework based on wavefield redatuming, i.e., on retrieving scattered fields within the medium where observations are otherwise not available, that decouples the influence of the overburden from that of the target in imaging and inversion: thus separately allowing for better target images and/or overburden/obstacle characterization. The key enabler for this is solving an intermediate inverse scattering problem for the medium’s focusing functions, in the context of 3D Marchenko field equations: these fields encode the effects of different portions of the medium without the need to first characterize medium properties. In this talk, we will review the 3D Marchenko system, discuss the theoretical and numerical inverse-problem aspects of retrieving focusing functions, and show examples of imaging options from one-sided data that are enabled by this framework.

This presentation is part of Minisymposium “MS67 - Advances and new directions in seismic imaging and inversion (3 parts)”
organized by: Mauricio Sacchi (University of Alberta) , Sergey Fomel (University of Texas, Austin) , Laurent Demanet (MIT ) .

Authors:

Ivan Vasconcelos (Dept. of Earth Sciences, Utrecht University )

Christian Reinicke (TU Delft)

Joeri Brackenhoff (TU Delft)

Matteo Ravasi (Statoil)

Tristan van Leeuwen (Utrecht University)

Keywords:

focusing operators, image deblurring, image enhancement, image reconstruction, integral equations for image analysis, inverse problems, numerical linear algebra, seismic imaging, targeted imaging, wavefield redatuming