Application of dynamic ray tracing in the 3-D inversion of seismic-reflection data

Abstract

Possible applications of dynamic ray tracing to the 3-D Born and Kirchhoff inversion of seismic-reflection data are discussed. It is shown that the most important quantities in the inversion integrals, such as the Beylkin determinant and the amplitudes of the ray-theory Green functions, can be determined using the dynamic ray-tracing procedure. Dynamic ray tracing can be simply performed along known rays in a very general, laterally varying, layered background medium. The algorithms do not require the determination of the derivatives of traveltimes which play an important role in some other methods. They will find valuable applications particularly in complex 3-D structures.