The goal of this study is to understand and quantify the attenuation effects in the subsurface and to create an accurate laterally and vertically varying quality factor Q model for gas clouds/pockets. Such Q models are used in seismic migration to improve image quality. We evaluate an inversion-based method, wave-equation migration Q analysis, with two major features. First, this method is performed in the image space to reduce noise, focus events, and provide a direct link between Q model perturbations and image perturbations. Second, this method uses wave-equation-based Q tomography to handle the complex wave propagation. We apply this method to three 2D synthetic examples. The numerical synthetic tests of this Q estimation method demonstrate its feasibility on characterizing Q anomalies and, as a consequence, improving the seismic image.

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