Generalized Radon transforms and slant stacks

The Radon transform or slant stack is becoming a widely used technique for analysing high-quality reflection and refraction data. The transform normally used is applicable to data from a line source in a plane model, that is, one Cartesian coordinate. The theoretical basis for the Radon transform pair for one Cartesian coordinate has appeared in the seismological literature. For a point source in plane or spherical geometry, or a line source in cylindrical geometry only the Radon transform for the direct problem (computation of synthetic seismograms) has been published. To analyse data an approximate inverse transform has been used. In this research note, the exact forms of the generalized Radon transform pairs are completed for a point source in plane or spherical geometry, and for a line source in cylindrical geometry. The differences will be important if the waveforms are being interpreted, and are most significant for near-vertical reflections — the type of data most commonly slant stacked.