Patent ID: 7821869

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) said assembled amplitude data are transformed from the offset-time domain to the time-slowness domain using a Radon transformation according to an index j of the slowness set and a sampling variable Δp; wherein j = p max - p min + 1 ⁢ ⁢ μ ⁢ ⁢ sec ⁢ / ⁢ m Δ ⁢ ⁢ p , Δp is from about 0.5 to about 4.0 μsec/m, p max is a predetermined maximum slowness, and p min is a predetermined minimum slowness; (b) whereby said primary reflection signals and said coherent noise transform into different regions of the time-slowness domain to enhance the separation therebetween.