Patent ID: 7830747

Claim:
A method for providing a seismic image of earth's subsurface, comprising: applying prestack time migration to a seismic data set representative of earth's subsurface in anisotropic, heterogeneous media, the seismic data acquired by deploying a plurality of seismic sensors proximate an area of the earth's subsurface to be evaluated, the seismic sensors generating at least one of an electrical and optical signal in response to seismic energy, comprising: performing multi-azimuth seismic data acquisition, comprising: obtaining three data subsets in three selected azimuthal directions from the seismic data set; performing azimuthal velocity analysis on the seismic data set to generate a velocity function representative of the seismic velocities in the earth's subsurface, comprising: determining an azimuthal velocity for each of the three data subsets; solving a linear system of equations in the three selected azimuthal directions and the three determined azimuthal velocities for three independent parameters; and constructing an azimuthal time migration velocity function from the three solved independent parameters; and constructing a time migration traveltime function from the constructed azimuthal time migration velocity function; providing an image of the earth's subsurface using the time migration traveltime function.