Prestack seismic data enhancement with the common-offset common reflection surface (CO CRS) stack

A new partial common-offset common reflection surface (CO CRS) stacking method is developed in this paper to enhance the quality of sparse low fold seismic data. A multiparameter CO CRS traveltime formula is applied to compute partially stacked CRS supergathers, which have improved signal-to-noise ratio compared with the original data and are regularized by filling the gaps in cases of missing traces. These improved prestack data can be used in many conventional processing steps, e.g., velocity analysis or prestack depth migration instead of the original data. Application on model data reveals that comparing with the image section obtained from the original seismic data, the image section by the application of depth migration with the CO CRS supergathers improves not only the signal-to-noise ratio but also the continuity of reflection events, which has better imaging results.