5D Local Angle Domain Gathers as an Ideal Representation for Directivity Driven Imaging

In seismic imaging, 5D recorded seismic data is migrated to the depth domain, forming a much lower dimensionality, the extra dimensions being reduced by integration. As a consequence much information is irretrievably lost, information that could be of use in characterizing with minimal uncertainty the subsurface geological features. In order to retain the full richness of the collected data in a form which can be of use in achieving an unambiguous interpretation of the geology of the subsurface, an approach is presented here that, using migration, maps data from the surface acquisition domain to that of the physically derived subsurface 7D domain. The gathers thus derived can be considered to be complete representations of the scattering event and as such can be processed subsequent to migration, to accentuate any aspect required. We have demonstrated the directionality derived images among many other possible applications.