Seismic demigration/migration in the curvelet domain

Curvelets can represent local plane waves. They efficiently decompose seismic images and possibly imaging operators. We study how curvelets are distorted after demigration followed by migration in a different velocity model. We show that for small local velocity perturbations, the demigration/migration is reduced to a simple morphing of the initial cutvelet. The derivation of the expected curvature of the curvelets shows that it is easier to sparsify the demigration/migration operator than the migration operator. An application on a 2D synthetic data set, generated in a smooth heterogeneous velocity model and with a complex reflectivity, demonstrates the usefulness of curvelets to predict what a migrated image would become in a locally different velocity model without the need for remigrating the full input data set. Curvelets are thus well suited to study the sensitivity of a prestack depth-migrated image with respect to the heterogeneous velocity model used for migration.