Extended images in action: efficient WEMVA via randomized probing

Image gathers as a function of subsurface offset are an important tool for velocity analysis in areas of complex geology. In this paper, we offer a new perspective on image gathers by organizing the extended image as a function of all subsurface offsets and all subsurface points into a matrix whose (i,j)^{th} entry captures the interaction between gridpoints i and j. For even small problems, it is infeasible to form and store this matrix. Instead, we propose an efficient algorithm to glean information from the image volume via efficient matrix-vector products. We illustrate how this can be used to construct objective functions for automatic MVA.