Conclusions

Prestack time migrating the Marmousi model seems like an ingredient for disaster, especially since the Marmousi model is complex and time migration conventionally does not handle complex media. However, a ray-tracing based time migration can handle any lateral inhomogeneity and is only guided by the limitations of ray theory. Using such an ($x-\tau$)-domain ray tracing, good images of the Marmousi model are obtained. In VTI media, this time migration allows us to avoid estimating the vertical velocity, a parameter that is typically not resolvable from surface seismic data.