CFP Operator Estimation And Inversion Demonstrated On a Field Data Set - Part I: Operator Updating

Summary For a reliable image of the subsurface correct focusing operators need be used. Traditionally these are calculated from the velocity-depth model. In the CFP approach they are obtained directly from the seismic data by (iteratively) updating the initial (hyperbolic) focusing operator using the principle of equal travel time. The updating can be done for a random sequence of focal points lying on different boundaries. There is no layer stripping involved. The updating procedure is already shown to work successfully on several complex synthetic data sets ([3], [7], [4] and [6]). In this paper the updating results on a real North Sea data set containing a saltdome are presented. The results show that the operator approach is valid even for focal points below the salt.