A new wave-equation-based prestack seismic processing system is propos
ed. This system has only two essential elements; velocity analysis and
depth migration. This approach applies truly surface-consistent stati
cs corrections, regardless of the amount of elevation, change or of ne
ar-surface velocity variation. It uses tomography for estimating the d
etails of shallow velocities and a finite-difference solution of the t
wo-way wave-equation both for computation of image times and for data
extrapolation in migration. A field data set that violates most of the
assumptions in conventional common midpoint (CMP) processing, because
of severe elevation changes and near-surface velocity variations, is
successfully processed. The final depth section reveals a complicated
fold-thrust geometry that was not visible after CMP processing.