Efficient wave-equation-based Kirchhoff-style migration using interpolated excitation information

Reverse time migration is widely recognized as one of the most advanced seismic depth migration techniques because of its ability to generate a high-quality seismic image even for complex structures. However, its practical implementation for large-scale applications can be hindered by tremendous computational overhead and memory demands associated with handling wavefields. To address these challenges, we propose a wave equation-based, Kirchhoff-style migration method incorporating the excitation amplitude imaging condition. In our migration scheme, both the forward and backward wavefields are represented using excitation information obtained by interpolating a limited set of excitation information. This representation allows us to avoid not only storing the forward wavefield but also performing backward wavefield simulation. Numerical experiments with both synthetic and field data demonstrate that the proposed migration approach can deliver high-quality migration images with significantly improved computational efficiency.