Diffraction imaging using an adaptive phase filter

As an ideal carrier of high-resolution information, seismic diffraction can be used to clarify and locate small-scale discontinuities or inhomogeneities in the subsurface. However, a diffraction is weak and thus be suppressed by the specular reflection. Furthermore, a diffraction would be destroyed by the conventional imaging method due to the polarity reversal of diffraction. In this paper, we analyse the behaviour of diffraction and reflection. For the image point on a horizontal or oblique reflector, the zone on both sides of the stationary point has the same energy after using a cosine weight function. Based on the behaviour, we propose the adaptive phase filter to adjust the polarity of the energy on both sides, and calculate it through the illumination angle and the reflector dip angle. This method avoids the calculation of the Fresnel zones and can further suppress residual reflection that disturb the diffraction images. Synthetic and field data applications show that the desired imaging results can be obtained by the proposed method. The test results demonstrate that the method is efficient in detecting small-scale discontinuities or inhomogeneities in the subsurface and can provide high-resolution information for seismic interpretation.