The possibilities of linearized inversion of internally scattered seismic data

Least-square migration is an iterative linearized inversion scheme that tends to suppress the migration artifacts and enhance the spatial resolution of the migrated image. However, standard least-square migration, based on imaging single scattering energy, may not be able to enhance events that are mainly illuminated by internal multiples such as vertical and nearly vertical faults. To alleviate this problem, we propose a linearized inversion framework to migrate internally multiply scattered energy. We applied this least-square migration of internal multiples to image a vertical fault. Tests on synthetic data demonstrate the ability of the proposed method to resolve a vertical fault plane that is poorly resolved by least-square imaging using primaries only. We, also, demonstrate the robustness of the proposed scheme in the presence of white Gaussian random observational noise and in the case of imaging the fault plane using inaccurate migration velocities.