Now that the world has well and truly crossed the threshold to the 21st century, it seems timely to review the progress of lithospheric seismic imaging and comment on recent developments in the field. In the context of this special issue, lithospheric seismic imaging refers to any kind of seismic study that gives rise to multidimensional (2-D or 3-D) views of the Earth's interior, from the shal...

Towards interactive seismic imaging with curvelets Hervé Chauris (Ecole des Mines de Paris) and Truong Nguyen (Ecole des Mines de Paris)

I present the equations for migrating IVSPWD (inverse VSP while drilling) autocorrelograms. These equations extend the Katz IVSPWD method to 2-D and 3-D media, and also provide a formal mathematical justification for inverting the reflectivity distribution from IVSPWD autocorrelograms. In addition, I describe a new imaging condition which images the primary-reflection energy compared to the Kat...

S U M M A R Y Relations between reflection and transmission responses of horizontally layered media were formulated by Claerbout in 1968 and by many others. In this paper we derive similar relations for 3-D inhomogeneous media. As the starting point for these derivations, we make use of two types of propagation invariants, based on one-way reciprocity theorems of the convolution type and of the...

Time-lapse 3-D seismic monitoring of subsurface rock property changes incurred during reservoir fluid-flow processes is an emerging new diagnostic technology for optimizing hydrocarbon production. I discuss the physical theory relevant for three-phase fluid flow in a producing oil reservoir, and rock physics transformations of fluid-flow pressure, temperature and pore-fluid saturation values to...

Seismic imaging, popularly known as tomography, borrowing the term from medical sciences, produces the raster image of the internal structure by combining information from a set of projections obtained at different viewing angles. To engineer high resolution and accurate solutions to mining problems, seismic traveltime tomography can yield a high resolution image of the subsurface to provide in...