Multicomponent prestack depth migration using the elastic screen method

A 3D multicomponent prestack depth-migration method is presented. An elastic-screen propagator based on one-way wave propagation with a wide-angle correction is used to extrapolate both source and receiver wavefields. The elastic-screen propagator neglects backscattered waves but can handle forward multiple-scattering effects, such as focusing/defocusing, diffraction, interference, and conversions between P- and S-waves. Vector-imaging conditions are used to generate a P-P image and a P-S converted-wave image. The application of the multicomponent elastic propagator and vector-imaging condition preserves more information carried by the elastic waves. It also solves the polarization problem of converted-wave imaging. Partial images from different sources with correct polarizations can be stacked to generate a final image. Numerical examples using 2D synthetic data sets are presented to show the feasibility of this method.