Vector-acoustic reverse-time migration of volve OBC dataset without up/down decomposed wavefields

Wavefield separation based on the combination of pressure and particle velocity data is generally used to extract the up- and down-going components from multi-component seabed or towed marine seismic recordings prior to imaging. By carefully combining vector-acoustic (VA) data in the extrapolation of shot gathers in reverse-time migration (RTM) we show that wavefield separation (deghosting) can be performed 'on-the-fly' at no extra cost. We call such a strategy VARTM and we successfully apply it to a North Sea OBC field dataset, acquired in the Volve field. We also discuss additional advantages of VARTM over standard RTM of up-going only waves such as improved handling of directivity information contained in the acquired vector-acoustic data for clearer shallow sections and imaging of the down-going component of the recorded field (mirror VARTM) without the need for an additional finite difference modelling.