Patent ID: 7542373

Claim:
A method of evaluating an earth formation comprising: (a) activating a seismic source at at least one source position and generating seismic waves into said earth formation, (b) receiving 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 (c) using 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; (d) combining, at each of the plurality of image points, the contributions to the amplitude from each of the plurality of source-receiver combinations; and (e) recording the image obtained by the combination on a suitable medium.