Reconstruction of lateral gradients from reflection tomography

The possibility is examined of inverting traveltimes to unveil the lateral gradients of propagation velocities along with the depths of reflection points. The algorithm is formulated as an optimization procedure with respect to unknown velocities and depths. Another parameter which plays an important role in the inversion itself is introduced: the coherency of the computed reflection points. The method is illustrated using a variety of synthetic data. Results show that the lateral velocity gradients and the depths of the reflection points can be separately retrieved from the collected reflection data sets using the method of reflection tomography. -Authors