Mitigation of defocusing by statics and near-surface velocity errors by interferometric least-squares migration

We propose an interferometric least-squares migration method that can significantly reduce migration artifacts due to statics and errors in the near-surface velocity model. We first choose a reference reflector whose topography is well known from the, e.g., well logs. Reflections from this reference layer are correlated with the traces associated with reflections from deeper interfaces to get crosscorrelograms. These crosscorrelograms are then migrated using interferometric least-squares migration (ILSM). In this way statics and velocity errors at the near surface are largely eliminated for the examples in our paper.