Method for enhancing seismic data

DETAILED DESCRIPTION In one embodiment, the present invention is a method for enhancing a seismic data trace comprising the steps of (i) transforming the seismic data trace to a zero-phase seismic data trace; (ii) locating all peaks and troughs on at least a portion of the zero-phase seismic data trace; and (iii) enhancing the amplitude values of the peaks and troughs.
This enhancement can be accomplished in a variety of ways.
For example, the amplitudes of all peaks may be adjusted to equal a first arbitrarily selected constant amplitude, and the amplitudes of all troughs may be adjusted to equal a second arbitrarily selected constant, which may be equal to or different from the first constant.
Alternatively, the amplitudes of all peaks may be made equal to the largest peak amplitude on the data trace, and the amplitudes of all troughs may be made equal to the largest trough amplitude on the data trace.
In another alternative, minimum amplitudes are specified for the peaks and troughs, and all peaks and troughs having amplitudes less than the specified minimum are enhanced to the specified minimum values.
In another embodiment of the invention, the zero-phase seismic data traces are converted to curvature traces.
The curvature traces may be generated by taking the second derivative with respect to time of the zero-phase data traces, provided that the data traces have been converted to continuous interpolated data traces defined at every time point.
Alternatively, and perhaps preferably, the curvature traces can be approximated by calculating the negative second difference of the discretized digital data at each sample point and plotting the result.