Patent ID: 8144543

Claim:
A method of processing seismic data comprising a gather of seismic traces organized according to one or several acquisition parameters, each seismic trace being a time dependent amplitude signal and being associated with a given position on the ground zone over which the acquisition has been carried out, the method comprising the steps of: determining with a computer a residual move-out (RMO) curve by picking in the gather of seismic traces; defining an equation for the RMO curve, as a combination of elementary functions of the acquisition parameter(s); orthogonalizing the elementary functions to determine an RMO curve as a combination of orthogonal elementary functions; for a given time or at a given depth, determining the coefficients of the combination that optimize the semblance of traces along the RMO curve; and processing the seismic traces in view of these coefficients and generating an image of underground geological structures corresponding to the gather of seismic traces.