Nonlinear structure-enhancing filtering using plane-wave prediction

Attenuation of random noise and enhancement of structural continuity can significantly improve the quality of seismic interpretation. We present a new technique, which aims at reducing random noise while protecting structural information. The technique is based on combining structure prediction with either similarity-mean filtering or lower-upper-middle (LUM) filtering. We use structure prediction to form a structural prediction of seismic traces from neighboring traces. We apply a nonlinear similarity-mean filter or an LUM filter to select best samples from different predictions. In comparison with other common filters, such as mean or median, the additional parameters of the nonlinear filters allow us to better control the balance between eliminating random noise and protecting structural information. Numerical tests using synthetic and field data show the effectiveness of the proposed structure-enhancing filters. INTRODUCTION Extracting structural information is the most important goal of seismic interpretation. A number of approaches have been proposed to preserve and enhance structural information. Hoeber et al. (2006) applied nonlinear filters, such as median, trimmed mean, and adaptive Gaussian, over planar surfaces parallel to the structural dip. Fehmers and Höcker (2003) and Hale (2009) applied structure-oriented filtering based on anisotropic diffusion. Fomel and Guitton (2006) suggested the method of plane-wave construction. AlBinHassan et al. (2006) developed 3-D edgepreserving smoothing (EPS) operators to reduce noise without blurring sharp discontinuities. Traonmilin and Herrmann (2008) used a mix of finite-impulse-response (FIR) and infinite-impulse-response (IIR) filters, followed by f -x filtering, to perform structure-preserving seismic processing. Whitcombe et al. (2008) introduced a frequency-dependent, structurally conformable filter. Random noise attenuation and structure protection are always ambivalent problems in seismic data processing. The main challenge in designing effective structure-enhancing filters is controlling the balance between noise attenuation and signal preservation. Mean filter (stacking) plays an important role in improving signal-to-noise ratio in seismic data processing (Yilmaz, 2001). Conventional stacking is a simple