Multifocusing improves seismic data

Multifocusing (MF) technology, based on multiparameter stacking, has been applied to enhance time imaging sections by dramatically increasing the fold of coherent summation of seismic signals. Implementation of the MF method is technically challenging because it requires defining three moveout parameters in the 2-D case and eight in the 3-D case, as opposed to a single parameter. MF technology was applied to low-fold and low-quality data from northwestern Russia. The MF method not only provides coherent stacking of seismic data with arbitrary source-receiver distribution to create high-quality time images, but it also has the potential to compute enhanced prestack seismic traces. The number and location of traces in the produced supergathers can be different from the input locations, and the resulting traces can be regular with increased signal-to-noise ratio due to partial coherent summation. The method is robust in the presence of non-coherent noise.