Polarity-consistent excitation amplitude imaging condition for elastic reverse time migration

Imaging conditions can not only affect the computational efficiency and storage cost of reverse time migration (RTM) but determine the quality of the final migrated images. This paper extends the idea of the well amplitude-preserved and highly-efficient excitation amplitude imaging condition from acoustic RTM to elastic RTM. For elastic RTM, the maximum amplitude of the separated P-wave and the corresponding image time of each grid point are saved during the forward modeling of the source wavefield and then PP and PS images are obtained by dividing the separated P- and S-waves of the backward-propagated receiver wavefield by the precomputed P-waves at each grid point that satisfies the image time. However, polarity reversals of the PS image will cause destructive interference when the stacked image is needed. In order to solve this problem, we propose the polarity-consistent excitation amplitude imaging condition by combining the excitation amplitude imaging condition with a shot-domain polarity reversal correction method. Then we provide the detailed realization process of this imaging condition in elastic RTM. By utilizing the relatively stable and well amplitude-preserved source-normalized cross-correlation imaging condition as a comparison, we testify to the feasibility and validity of the proposed imaging condition in the aspects of amplitude preservation property, imaging capability of complex structures, storage cost and computational efficiency. Considering the balance between the efficiency and image quality, the polarity-consistent excitation amplitude imaging condition can be a good choice for elastic RTM. (paper)