Reflected wave least squares reverse time migration with angle illumination compensation

High-quality seismic data imaging plays an important role in the lithological interpretation of subsurface structures. However, high-quality imaging remains a challenging task. Based on the linear inversion theory of reflected wave equations, this paper proposes reflected wave least squares reverse time migration with angle illumination compensation to better balance the amplitude of seismic imaging. We use the reflected wave migration equation to unify forward and backward propagation, which helps to obtain an image with correct phase and symmetric waveform. Under the assumption that the spectrum of seismic wavefield remains unchanged, the Poynting vector method is used to efficiently calculate the propagation direction of seismic waveform and seismic illumination in the angle domain. During iteration, angle-domain illumination is used as a preconditioner to compensate for the amplitude of the iterated gradient terms based on the angle value. In this manner, we can enhance the imaging energy of steeply inclined structures. To improve the stability of linear inversion, the spatial derivative of the image is used as a regularized constraint term. Numerical tests show that the proposed method can suppress imaging noise as well as improve resolution and amplitude fidelity of the images. Furthermore, the inversed result can be used to estimate underground reflectivity, which is important for the further development of seismic inversion technology.