In this paper, a new eikonal equation is derived for P-wave propagation in vertical transversely isotropic media. The obtained formulation is adequately compact, compared with other available acoustic formulations, and can easily be implemented in a ray tracing routine through Hamiltonian formalism. It is shown that the new formalism is not suffering from severe ray-bending effect and the travel time results are much more accurate than its ancestor. Furthermore, the new formulation also gives a simple geometrical interpretation of wave propagation in a VTI medium. Numerical examples verify the efficiency of the method, as well as its acceptable accuracy in predicting traveltimes, for heterogeneous VTI medium.

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