Patent ID: 7333392

Claim:
A method for reconstructing seismic data signals of poor quality to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of the data for display and geological analysis in connection with the selection of drilling sites for the recovery of hydrocarbons, the method comprising the steps: a. providing a signal model by applying a Karhunen-Loeve transform to selected input seismic data collected for the target zone to form a co-variance matrix from the dot products of all pairs of input data; b. computing the eigenvalues and eigenvectors for said matrix and inversely transforming the most significant eigenvectors to provide a coherent estimate of the noise-free signal to define said signal model; c. combining the input data with the signal model data based on a continuity attribute of said signal estimate data associated with a laterally variable signal-to-noise ratio from ground surface or near-ground surface irregularities, wherein combining the input data with the signal model is minimized where said signal model data is continuous and any discontinuous data is enhanced by a contribution of the signal estimate data; and d. displaying for analysis the reconstructed seismic data for the target zone.