Inline delayed-shot migration in tilted elliptical-cylindrical coordinates

Riemannian wavefield extrapolation, a one-way wave-equation method for propagating seismic data on generalized coordinate systems, is extended to inline delayed-shot migration using 3D tilted elliptical-cylindrical (TEC) coordinate meshes. Compared to Cartesian geometries, TEC coordinates are more conformal to the shape of inline delayed-source impulse response, which allows the bulk of wavefield energy to propagate at angles lower to the extrapolation axis, thus improving global propagation accuracy. When inline coordinate tilt angles are well matched to the inline source ray parameters, the TEC coordinate extension affords accurate propagation of both steep-dip and turning-wave components important for successfully imaging complex geologic structure. Wavefield extrapolation in TEC coordinates is no more complicated than propagation in elliptically anisotropic media and can be handled by existing implicit finite-difference methods. Impulse response tests illustrate the phase accuracy of the method and show that the approach is free of numerical anisotropy. Migration tests from a realistic 3D wide-azimuth synthetic derived from a field Gulf of Mexico data set demonstrate the imaging advantages afforded by the technique, including the improved imaging of steeply dipping salt flanks at a reduced computational cost.