Patent ID: 7764571

Claim:
A system configured to evaluate an earth formation, the system comprising: a seismic source at least one source position configured to generate seismic waves into the earth formation, at least one receiver configured to receive three components of seismic data at a plurality of receiver positions the at least one source position and the plurality of receiver positions defining a plurality of source-receiver combinations; and a processor configured to: (i) use a vector combination of the three components of the seismic data to define a contribution from each of the plurality of source-receiver combinations to an amplitude of an image at a plurality of image points using traveltimes from the at least one source position to the plurality of image points and traveltimes from the plurality of image points to the plurality of receiver positions; (ii) combine, at each of the plurality of image points, the contributions to the amplitude from each of the plurality of source-receiver combinations to produce an image of the earth formation.