Seismic imaging in the curvelet domain: achievements and perspectives

From a geophysical point of view, curvelets can be seen as the representation of local plane waves. They can be useful for a series of seismic processing tasks, in particular for data denoising or data compression. We discuss if curvelets are well-suited for seismic migration. It appears that the modification of the curvature induced during the wave propagation has to be correctly taken into account. In the case where the maximum wave front curvature is limited, then curvelets can be used to simplify the imaging operators by only using the leading-order terms.