Migration velocity analysis using a ray method asymptotics of the double square root equation

Seismic images of subsurface structures are the most valuable outcome of seismic data processing. The image quality is strongly affected by the accuracy of background velocity model. In this paper, we develop a gradient-descent velocity update algorithm based on our original high-frequency asymptotics of the double square root equation, i. e., a special one-way approximation of the wave equation describing single-scattered wave field only. We propose a loss function consistent with widely adopted imaging condition and derive equations for its gradient computation. We test our method on noise-free synthetic datasets in 2D settings.