Structure-oriented edge-preserving smoothing based on accurate estimation of orientation and edges

In this paper, we present a new method for reducing seismic noise while preserving structural and stratigraphic discontinuities. Structure-oriented edge-preserving smoothing requires information such as the local orientation and edge of the reflections. The information is usually estimated from seismic data with full frequency bandwidth. When the data has a very low signal to noise ratio (SNR), the noise usually reduces the estimation accuracy. For seismic data with extremely low SNR, the dominant frequency has higher SNR than other frequencies, so it can provide orientation and edge information more reliably than other frequencies. Orientation and edge are usually described in terms of apparent reflection dips and coherence differences, respectively. When frequency changes, both dip and coherence difference change more slowly than the seismogram itself. For this reason, dip and coherence estimated from dominant frequency data can approximately represent those of other frequency data. Ricker wavelet are widely used in seismic modeling. The Marr wavelet has the same shape as Ricker wavelets in both time and frequency domains, so the Marr wavelet transform is selected to divide seismic data into several frequency bands. Reflection apparent dip as well as the edge information can be obtained by scanning the dominant frequency data. This information can be used to selectively smooth the frequency bands (dominant, low, and high frequencies) separately by structure-oriented edge-preserving smoothing technology. The ultimate noise-suppressed seismic data is the combination of the smoothed frequency band data. Application to synthetic and real data shows the method can effectively reduce noise, preserve edges, improve trackable reflection continuity, and maintain useful information in seismic data.