Acoustic VTI modeling and pre-stack reverse-time migration based on the time–space domain staggered-grid finite-difference method

Reverse-time migration (RTM) is based on seismic numerical modeling algorithms, and the accuracy and efficiency of RTM strongly depend on the algorithm used for numerical solution of wave equations. Finite-difference (FD) methods have been widely used to solve the wave equation in seismic numerical modeling and RTM. In this paper, we derive a series of time–space domain staggered-grid FD coefficients for acoustic vertical transversely isotropic (VTI) equations, and adopt these difference coefficients to solve the equations, then analyze the numerical dispersion and stability, and compare the time–space domain staggered-grid FD method with the conventional method. The numerical analysis results demonstrate that the time–space domain staggered-grid FD method has greater accuracy and better stability than the conventional method under the same discretizations. Moreover, we implement the pre-stack acoustic VTI RTM by the conventional and time–space domain high-order staggered-grid FD methods, respectively. The migration results reveal that the time–space domain staggered-grid FD method can provide clearer and more accurate image with little influence on computational efficiency, and the new FD method can adopt a larger time step to reduce the computation time and preserve the imaging accuracy as well in RTM. Meanwhile, when considering the anisotropy in RTM for the VTI model, the imaging quality of the acoustic VTI RTM is better than that of the acoustic isotropic RTM.

► Deriving staggered-grid FD coefficients with time-space domain dispersion relation.
► Acoustic VTI modeling and RTM with the time-space domain staggered-grid FD method.
► Obtaining high-precision numerical modeling and accurate imaging.