Patent ID: 9612351
Date: 2017-04-04
CPC Classifications: G01V

Claim:
1. A computer-implemented method for attenuating incoherent noise in seismic data representative of a subsurface region of interest, the method comprising: a. receiving, at a computer processor, the seismic data which contains incoherent noise that varies spatially and temporally; b. transforming, via the computer processor, the seismic data into a domain wherein the seismic data have a sparse or compressible representation and the incoherent noise is represented by a peak in a histogram of coefficients to create transformed seismic data; c. dividing the domain into windows wherein the windows represent known spatio-temporal locations that are a subset of spatial and temporal locations in the seismic data; d. determining, via the computer processor, statistics of the transformed seismic data to define a noise level in each window; e. determining, via the computer processor, a filter for each window based on the statistics of the transformed data; f. applying, via the computer processor, the filter for each window to the transformed seismic data in each window to create filtered transformed seismic data that accounts for spatial and temporal variation in strength of signal and noise in the seismic data; g. performing, via the computer processor, an inverse transform of the filtered seismic data to create filtered seismic data; and h. processing the filtered seismic data to allow interpretation of subsurface features for exploration and development of hydrocarbon reservoirs.