TRAINING MACHINE LEARNING MODELS WITH SPARSE INPUT

This disclosure describes a system and method for effectively training a machine learning model to identify features in DAS and/or seismic imaging data with limited or no human labels. This is accomplished using a masked autoencoder (MAE) network that is trained in multiple stages. The first stage is a self-supervised learning (SSL) stage where the model is generically trained to predict data that has been removed (masked) from an original dataset. The second stage involves performing additional predictive training on a second dataset that is specific to a particular geographic region, or specific to a certain set of desired features. The model is fine-tuned using labeled data in order to develop feature extraction capabilities.