The Fourier transform and its computationally efficient discrete implementation, the fast Fourier transform (FFT), are omnipresent in geophysical processing. While a general implementation of the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) will take on the order [Formula: see text] operations to compute the transform of an N point sequence, the FFT algorithm accomplishes the DFT with an operation count proportional to [Formula: see text] When a large percentage of the output coefficients of the transform are not desired, or a majority of the inputs to the transform are zero, it is possible to further reduce the computation required to perform the DFT. Here, we review one possible approach to accomplishing this reduction and indicate its application to phase‐shift migration.