Patent Document ID: 8983779
Application ID: 13364054
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A computer-implemented method for creating an image of sub-surface formations in a defined 2D or 3D volume of a geological structure comprising: partitioning a velocity model domain representing geophysical wavefield propagation characteristics of a sub-surface structure of the earth in said defined volume into a plurality of blocks, each block having an associated processing task for processing wave data associated with a shot; receiving, at a local memory storage device, data representing measurements of each wave produced by a shot of a sequence of plural shots; and assigning each partitioned domain block to one or more processing nodes of a distributed processing parallel computer device having a plurality of processing nodes interconnected through one or more communication networks; computing, in parallel, using said associated processing tasks at each said processing node, data representing contributions of forward wave propagation data and reverse wave propagation at that node using said shot measurement data; configuring each node for pipelined processing wherein said forward or reverse wave propagation data are computed and stored at the processing node for a current trace data while new shot data for a next single shot is loaded into the local memory at each node; using said computed forward wave propagation data and reverse wave propagation data contributions stored at each node to form an imaging condition from which an image with a current resolution of sub-surface formations is created; determining whether the sub-surface formations image needs to be examined at a finer resolution, and one of: increasing a spatial resolution of said partitioned domain blocks and repeating said computing process at the increased resolution, or terminating the computing process.