PP / PS anisotropic stereotomography

SUMMARY Stereotomography is a slope tomographic method which gives good results for background velocity model estimation in 2‐D isotropic media. We develop here the extension of the method to 3‐D general anisotropic media for PP and PS events. We do not take into account the issue of shear wave degeneracy. As in isotropic media, the sensitivity matrix of the inversion can be computed by paraxial ray tracing. We introduce a ‘constant Z stereotomography’ approach, which can reduce the size of the sensitivity matrix. Based on ray perturbation theory, we give all the derivatives of stereotomography data parameters with respect to model parameters in a 3‐D general anisotropic medium. These general formulas for the derivatives can also be used in other applications that rely on anisotropic ray perturbation theory. In particular, we obtain derivatives of the phase velocity with respect to position, phase angle and elastic medium parameters, all for general anisotropic media. The derivatives are expressed using the Voigt notation for the elastic medium parameters. We include a Jacobian that allows to change the model parametrization from Voigt to Thomsen parameters. Explicit expressions for the derivatives of the data are given for the case of 2‐D tilted transversely isotropic (TTI) media. We validate the method by single‐parameter estimation of each Thomsen parameter field of a 2‐D TTI synthetic model, where data are modelled by ray tracing. For each Thomsen parameter, the estimated velocity field fits well with the true velocity field.