Coherent noise attenuation in the radial trace domain

Coherent noise is a persistent problem in seismic imaging, and a number of techniques have been developed to attenuate it. The radial trace (RT) transform, a simple seismic data mapping algorithm, can be used as the basis for a particularly flexible and effective method for attenuating coherent noise on both prestack and poststack seismic data. Described here are the principles and some practical application details for attenuating coherent noise in the RT domain. A comparison between frequency-wavenumber (f-k) and RT domain filtering on a synthetic model is presented, and some of the differences and advantages of RT methods are identified. Next, RT coherent noise attenuation is demonstrated using a set of good-quality field data; it is then applied to a very noisy data set. The results obtained with this last set prove to be as good as, or better than, those produced using f-k filtering.