Artifact-free reverse time migration

Abstract

We have derived an improved reverse time migration (RTM) scheme to image the medium without artifacts arising from internal multiple reflections. This is based on a revised implementation of Marchenko redatuming using a new time-truncation operator. Because of the new truncation operator, we can use the time-reversed version of the standard wavefield-extrapolation operator as initial estimate for retrieving the upgoing focusing function. Then, the retrieved upgoing focusing function can be used to directly image the medium by correlating it with the standard wavefieldextrapolation operator. This imaging scheme can be seen as an artifact-free RTM scheme with two terms. The first term gives the conventional RTM image with the wrong amplitude and artifacts due to internal multiple reflections. The second term gives a correction image that can be used to correct the amplitude and remove artifacts in the image generated by the first term. We evaluated the success of the method with a 2D numerical example.