A wave-equation based method is developed for seismic illumination analysis. The approach uses the one-way screen propagator to provide fast and accurate wavefield extrapolation. A local plane wave analysis is used to determine energy propagation directions. The method can avoid the singularity problem usually linked to the high frequency asymptotic method. It provides a practical tool for three-dimensional full-volume illumination analysis in complicated structures. To demonstrate the potential application of this method, numerical examples for the 3D SEG/EAGE salt model are calculated.
Advances in seismic technology, particularly in prestack depth migration, have made significant improvement in providing reliable high-resolution images for complex structures.
