JMI based on reflectivity-constrained velocity estimation

Abstract

Joint Migration Inversion (JMI) automatically provides a structual imaging and velocity model of the subsurface using primaries and all higher order scattering. In the recent implementation and numerical examples, it has been shown that JMI is a robust algorithm to estimate reflectivity and velocity models. However, the estimated velocity models are relatively smooth and lack detail. In this chapter we present a velocity estimation procedure based on a reflectivity constraint in JMI in order to improve the resolution of the velocity model. The residual between the estimated velocity by JMI and the approximate velocity that is derived from the estimated reflectivity is minimized through an additional constraint in the objective function. An initial synthetic example is shown to demonstrate the validity of the proposed method.