AccScience Publishing / JSE / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/JSE025320055
ARTICLE

Efficient wave-equation-based Kirchhoff-style migration using interpolated excitation information

Sumin Kim1 Jiho Ha2 Wookeen Chung1*
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1 Department of Energy and Resources Engineering, National Korea Maritime and Ocean University, Busan, South Korea
2 Pohang Branch, Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM), Pohang, South Korea
JSE 2025, 34(3), JSE025320055 https://doi.org/10.36922/JSE025320055
Submitted: 9 August 2025 | Revised: 4 September 2025 | Accepted: 11 September 2025 | Published: 8 October 2025
© 2025 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
Abstract

Reverse time migration is widely recognized as one of the most advanced seismic depth migration techniques because of its ability to generate a high-quality seismic image even for complex structures. However, its practical implementation for large-scale applications can be hindered by tremendous computational overhead and memory demands associated with handling wavefields. To address these challenges, we propose a wave equation-based, Kirchhoff-style migration method incorporating the excitation amplitude imaging condition. In our migration scheme, both the forward and backward wavefields are represented using excitation information obtained by interpolating a limited set of excitation information. This representation allows us to avoid not only storing the forward wavefield but also performing backward wavefield simulation. Numerical experiments with both synthetic and field data demonstrate that the proposed migration approach can deliver high-quality migration images with significantly improved computational efficiency.

Keywords
Seismic migration
Computational efficiency
Seismic imaging
Funding
This research was supported by the Korea Institute of Marine Science and Technology Promotion (KIMST) funded by the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, Korea (RS-2023- 00259633) and the Basic Research Project “Development of operation management infrastructure for TAMHAE 3 and seamless seismic technology connecting coastal areas (25–3322)” of the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT of Korea.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare they have no competing interests.
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Journal of Seismic Exploration, Print ISSN: 0963-0651, Published by AccScience Publishing