APERTURE COMPENSATION TOMOGRAPHY 1

A bstract Conventional velocity analysis can handle a horizontally stratified medium well. There is no indication, though, that it will be as successful when applied to a more complicated geological structure. In fact, a small angle of incidence may transform to a wide‐angle reflection event for a dipping interface. In this case, conventional velocity analysis may lead to large errors and thus cannot be applied. Seismic tomography is attractive as it is virtually free from any restrictions imposed on the velocity distribution in the model space or on the setup of a seismic experiment. It is important, however, to recall that seismic tomography yields results of inferior quality compared to medical tomography. This paper investigates the reason for this and how to suppress a significant blurring of seismic tomograms. Unlike medical tomography, one cannot provide full angular coverage of the model space in a typical seismic experiment: the sources and the receivers cannot surround an unknown object inside the earth to provide a complete spectrum of view angles. Incomplete angular coverage may lead to the occurrence of large inaccuracies in the computed tomograms especially when the initial model is poorly chosen. We demonstrate a method of suppressing the adverse effects related to an incomplete angular recording. This is ‘compensation tomography’ which can be used efficiently in the case of a limited angular aperture. Numerical experiments illustrate the theory.