Kirchhoff Migrations

Fast, accurate subsurface imaging and efficient velocity model building.

The Kirchhoff migration is the most commonly used migration for depth and time imaging.  It is particularly attractive due to its speed and target-oriented capability, which enable efficient velocity model building and updating.  In addition, the Kirchhoff migration offers adaptability to irregular acquisition geometries, and flexibility in handling anisotropic and converted wave velocity models and surface topography.

Emerson Kirchhoff migrations are available as 2D and 3D prestack time and depth migration add-on modules for GeoDepth^®, and are designed to run efficiently on large clusters comprising massive amounts of nodes.  They are integrated within the Paradigm parallel framework (PPF), which is specifically engineered to support high-performance computing (HPC). In 2D surveys, users can easily and efficiently run migrations for tens to hundreds of 2D lines.

Emerson Kirchhoff migrations support both land and marine data, including Ocean Bottom Cable recording.  In addition to standard offset gathers, 3D OVT (Offset Vector Tiles) gathers, spiral offset gathers, and "star" (azimuth sector) gathers can be generated. Variable binning imrpoves amplitude balancing for land data.

These migrations have been successfully used in a variety of regions, such as the Gulf of Mexico, the North Sea, Offshore Western Africa, and others.