Extraction of events from 3D volumes of seismic data

This paper describes a method for extracting 3D events from a 3D volume of seismic data for the purposes of geophysical interpretation. An event is the recoded waveform caused by a seismic scatterer. It can be modeled as hyperboloids with local perturbations. Extraction is difficult because of the local perturbations and, particularly, because events cross one another. The original data is in the form of 2D time sections which are vertical slices through the data volume. Constraints based on the physics of the seismic experiment are used to extract 2D event curves from the time sections and then combine them into 3D events. Two types of surfaces are fitted to the 3D event so that meaningful interpretations can be made