Patent ID: 7626887

Claim:
A method for processing seismic data performed by a processor executing program instructions on a computer readable memory, the method comprising: (a) selecting a first trace from a first seismic data set and a second trace from a second seismic data set, wherein the first seismic data set and the second seismic data set were acquired from one or more seismic receivers; (b) extracting one or more features of a same type from the first trace and the second trace, wherein the extracted features comprise only a portion of the first trace and the second trace; (c) matching the extracted features from the first trace with the extracted features from the second trace; (d) calculating for a displacement field using one or more of the matching features of the first trace and the second trace, wherein the displacement field is a regularly sampled trace representing a time shift between the first trace and the second trace; and (e) applying the displacement field to the second trace to align the second trace to the first trace.