3-D ACOUSTIC REVERSE-TIME MIGRATION WITH A STRESS-VELOCITY FINITE-DIFFERENCE METHOD

An original formulation of the 3-D reverse-time migration method was d eveloped employing either a full or a one-way acoustic wave hyperbolic system that is solved with explicit finite differences using the MacC ormack scheme. The one-way wave reverse-time migration method does not suffer from the unwanted evanescent energy and does not generate mult iple energy. The full-wave reverse-time migration can image dips beyon d 90 degrees. The algorithms were highly vectorized to take full advan tage of the computational power of vector supercomputers. The 3-D reve rse-time migration algorithms were used for depth migration of a 3-D s ynthetic data set (zero offset) from large-scale modeling in the oil s ands of Cold Lake, Alberta.