Place of publication: Tulsa, OK , Уear of publication: 2016

Diffractions always need more advertising. It is true that conventional seismic processing and migration are usually successful in using specular refections to estimate subsur face velocities and reconstruct the geometry and strength of continuous and pronounced refectors. However, correct identifcation of geological discontinuities, such as faults, pinch-outs, and small-size scattering objects, is one of the main objectives of seismic interpretation. The seismic response from these structural elements is encoded in diffractions, and diffractions are essentially lost during the conventional processing/migration sequence. Hence, we advocate a diffraction-based, data-oriented approach to enhance image resolution-as opposed to the traditional image-oriented techniques, which operate on the image after processing and migration. Even more: it can be shown that, at least in principle, processing of diffractions can lead to superresolution and the recovery of details smaller than the seismic wavelength.