Improving Imaging through Specular Amplitude Enhancement in the Local Angle Domain

We present a method to improve imaging in the local angle domain (LAD) decomposition and imaging system. This system uses the entire recorded data to generate true-amplitude, angle-dependent or angle and azimuth dependent imaging gathers (Koren and Ravve 2011). These gathers have the ability to distinguish the wavefields by their directional components: Specular (continuous structural surfaces) and diffraction (discontinuous objects such as small-scale fractures and faults). The high-energy values associated with the specular directions can be used to enhance the continuous objects to obtain a diffraction-free, sharpened image of highly complex areas. We propose that the specular enhancement in the LAD system be used to re-evaluate existing land and marine (including narrow-azimuth legacy) seismic data to obtain more detailed high-resolution images without the need to acquire additional 3D data about existing assets.