Common Midpoint versus common offset acquisition geometry in seismic imaging

We compare two standard ways of collecting data in seismic experiments (a) the common offset acquisition geometry where the source and receiver collecting data on the surface of the earth are offset by a constant distance and (b) the common midpoint acquisition geometry in which the source and receiver move away from a common midpoint. Under the simplifying assumption of constant background wave speed, we show that from 3-dimensional set of acquired data, standard image reconstruction procedure does not introduce artifacts in the common offset case, whereas the common midpoint acquisition geometry does, and the strength of the artifacts in this case is the same as the that of the true singularities.

People: Raluca Felea, Venkateswaran P. Krishnan, Clifford Nolan and Eric Todd Quinto

Status: Completed, Paper to appear in Inverse Problems and Imaging.