Patent ID: 7257488

Claim:
A method for reconstructing depositional conditions under which sedimentary layers have formed, from chronological classifications of reflectors forming lines of pixels extracted from an image representing seismic signal amplitudes, comprising: A. Carrying out iteratively an estimation of a first and of a second chronological scenario of the-deposition of the sedimentary layers, by assigning to each one of the reflectors two chronological level numbers, Tup and Tdown respectively, determined as follows: a) assigning an initial first chronological level number Tup to a first group of reflectors, and an initial second chronological level number Tdown to a second group of reflectors, the second group being the first group of reflectors when there is no reflector above the first group; b) assigning a chronological level number Tup=Tup+1 to the-reflectors of pixels located above the reflectors of the first group and above no other reflector, these reflectors assigned to level Tup+1 making up new reflectors of the first group; c) starting again from b), and stopping when all the reflectors of the first group are assigned to Tup; d) assigning a chronological level number Tdown=Tdown−1 to the reflectors of pixels located below the reflectors of the second group and below no other reflector, these reflectors assigned to level Tdown−1 making up the new reflectors of the second group; e) starting again from d), and stopping when all the reflectors of the second group are assigned to Tdown; B. Performing an interpretation of the chronological scenarios so as to reconstruct the depositional conditions; and C. Displaying an image of the depositional conditions.