Passive Seismic Tomography

Passive Seismic Tomography (PST) is a technique developed in the early 1980s by K. Aki and students at MIT to image the earth's subsurface using small earthquakes instead of explosions or vibroseis. PST requires an active tectonic region with sufficient microseismicity to serve as a source. Any tectonically active area with enough earthquakes around the target of interest can be imaged using PST.

Let ISTI develop a monitoring solution for your region of interest. We have the expertise, hardware, and staff to provide a complete end-to-end PST solution. If you already have a network running, we can use your data with our workflow to produce a comprehensive 3D image.

ISTI has developed an efficient workflow for processing data from a microseismic network to create a 3D velocity image using PST techniques. ISTI seismologists Ilya Dricker and Paul Friberg have been performing PST for the industry using advanced techniques for many years, including finite difference Eikonal equation solvers for ray tracing. We collaborate with leading researchers to improve our algorithms and provide high-precision relative locations using double-differencing techniques (Waldhauser and Ellsworth, 2000) with 3D velocity models.

The slideshow includes the workflow for PST data processing.