Mapping moveout approximations in TI media

Moveout approximations play a very important role in seismic modeling, inversion, and scanning for parameters in complex media. We developed a scheme to map one-way moveout approximations for transversely isotropic media with a vertical axis of symmetry (VTI), which is widely available, to the tilted case (TTI) by introducing the effective tilt angle. As a result, we obtained highly accurate TTI moveout equations analogous with their VTI counterparts. Our analysis showed that the most accurate approximation is obtained from the mapping of generalized approximation. The new moveout approximations allow for, as the examples demonstrate, accurate description of moveout in the TTI case even for vertical heterogeneity. The proposed moveout approximations can be easily used for inversion in a layered TTI medium because the parameters of these approximations explicitly depend on corresponding effective parameters in a layered VTI medium.