Marchenko imaging for TTI media

Marchenko imaging can effectively suppress migration artifacts associated with internal multiples while preserving amplitude fidelity. However, most existing Marchenko imaging studies are conducted under the assumption of isotropic media. Neglecting the anisotropic characteristics of real media can lead to inaccurate phase estimation of the initial focusing function, thereby reducing the accuracy of the reconstructed Green’s functions and the final imaging results. To address this issue, this paper proposes a Marchenko imaging method tailored for tilted transversely isotropic (TTI) media. First, the initial focusing function from a subsurface imaging point to the surface is estimated using the pseudo-acoustic first-order velocity-stress equations in TTI media. The preprocessed shot records, together with the estimated initial focusing function, are then used as input to reconstruct Green’s functions by solving Marchenko equation. Next, the reconstructed up- and down-going Green’s functions are incorporated into an energy-compensated cross-correlation imaging condition to generate the imaging results. This procedure is repeated to achieve Green’s function reconstruction and imaging for all imaging points within the subsurface target region. Synthetic model experiments demonstrate that the proposed method enables accurate reconstruction of Green’s function in TTI media and produces clear imaging results with a high signal-to-noise ratio.