Patent ID: 7564740

Claim:
A method of processing seismic data to remove unwanted noise from meaningful reflection signals indicative of subsurface formations, wherein said seismic data comprise amplitude data recorded over time at a number of seismic receivers in an area of interest, said amplitude data are assembled into common geometry gathers in an offset-time domain, and said amplitude data comprise primary reflection signals and coherent noise that overlap in an offset-time domain; said method comprising the step of enhancing the separation between primary reflection signals and coherent noise by transforming said data from the offset-time domain to the time-slowness domain, wherein: (a) an offset weighting factor x n is applied to said amplitude data, wherein x is offset and 0<n<1; and (b) said offset weighted amplitude data are transformed from the offset-time domain to the time-slowness domain using a Radon transformation; (c) whereby said primary reflection signals and said coherent noise transform into different regions of the time-slowness domain to enhance the separation therebetween.