Time-depth conversion using image ray and normal ray in the tau-p domain: application in synthetic data

The time-depth seismic conversion is an important tool in seismic processing in order to obtain friendly results to the interpreter. The achievement of these sections, in depth, can be accomplished by pre- and post-stacking migration and by ray tracing methods. The tracing of normal and image rays were the methodologies used in this work for such conversion. The image ray converts a post-stacked time-migrated section to depth domain using only an initial direction of propagation. The normal ray converts time-stacked sections into depth sections requiring a set of a priori initial directions, this initial set of directions is obtained by slant stack technique. The sections obtained by image ray tracing showed good accuracy in recovering the depth of reflectors. The sections obtained by normal ray tracing recovered, with great accuracy, the depth of reflectors as well as the good lateral continuity of the same.