LAUSR

Extracting accurate common image angle gathers from pre‐stack depth migrations is important in the generation of any incremental uplift to the amplitude versus angle attributes and seismic inversions that can lead to significant impacts in exploration and development success. The commonly used Kirchhoff migration outputs surface common offset image gathers that require a transformation to angle gathers for amplitude versus angle analysis. The accuracy of this transformation is one of the factors that determine the robustness of the amplitude versus angle measurements. Here, we investigate the possibility of implementing an extended imaging condition, focusing on the space‐lag condition, for generating subsurface reflection angle gathers within a Kirchhoff migration. The objective is to determine if exploiting the spatial local shift imaging condition can provide any increase in angle gather fidelity relative to the common offset image gathers. The same restrictions with a ray‐based approach will apply using the extended imaging condition as both the offset and extended imaging condition method use travel times derived from solutions to an Eikonal equation. The aims are to offer an alternative ray‐based method to generate subsurface angle gathers and to understand the impact on the amplitude versus angle response. To this end, the implementation of the space‐shift imaging condition is discussed and results of three different data sets are presented. A layered three‐dimensional model and a complex two‐dimensional model are used to assess the space shift image gathers output from such a migration scheme and to evaluate the seismic attributes relative to the traditional surface offset common image gathers. The synthetic results show that the extended imaging condition clearly provides an uplift in the measured amplitude versus angle over the surface offset migration. The noise profile post‐migration is also improved for the space‐lag migration due to the double summation inside the migration. Finally, we show an example of a space‐lag gather from deep marine data and compare the resultant angle gathers with those generated from an offset migration and a time‐shift imaging condition Kirchhoff migration. The comparison of the real data with a well log shows that the space‐lag result is a better match to the well compared to the time‐lag extended imaging condition and the common offset Kirchhoff migration. Overall, the results from the synthetics and real data show that a Kirchhoff migration with an extended imaging condition is capable of generating subsurface angle gathers with an incremental improvement in amplitude versus angle fidelity and lower noise but comes at a higher computational cost.