Jan Dewar, Jon Downton, Glen Larsen;

Core Lab Reservoir Technologies Division, Calgary, Alberta

In oil painting restoration, masterpieces dirtied by
centuries of grime and smoke are cleaned to reveal the
original brilliant image. The recent cleaning and restoration of the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel are a familiar
example. Once the unwanted dirt had been removed, the
beauty and vibrant colors of the true image was stunning.
The splendor of the true image had been there all the time,
unseen and obscured by noise, for years. The restoration
renewed the vivid colors of Michelangelos work, and, in
fact, caused art historians to reconsider their understanding of the masters use of color.
Interestingly, early restorers attempted to clean the Sistine
ceiling with materials ranging from bread to retsina wine.
It became apparent that to successfully uncover the original painting, proper cleaning methods would be needed.
But just removing the noise would not be enough: heavyhanded approaches like scrubbing by brute force or
cleaning with solvents could do this but would damage the
paint. A method had to be found which could lift the dirt
without altering the original image.

How can art restoration inspire seismic data

processing?
Seismic data contains both desirable signal and undesirable noise. One of the challenges of seismic data processing
is to remove the noise, leaving just the good signal. There
are many approaches to doing this; most have shortcomings such as mathematical artifacts that alter or distort the
signal, or simply fail to address certain kinds of noise. For
example, Radon de-multiple methods transform surface
seismic data from time-offset coordinates to zero offset
intercept time slowness coordinates, where various
elements of the recorded data, such as signal and noise,
may be more easily separated. Unwanted multiple events
are isolated in the transform space and reconstructed in the
data space using an inverse Radon transform. The reconstructed multiples are then subtracted from the input,
leaving, in theory, modeled primaries only.
Non-hyperbolic multiples are problematic for Radon
methods
Traditional Radon methods often work well but fail to
address situations where the multiple reflection is nonhyperbolic. This happens frequently in marine data where
the sea floor has rugged, rapidly changing topography: the
time-offset curve of the water bottom multiple reverberation is not hyperbolic. A Radon transform typically
assumes that a multiple exhibits a parabolic or hyperbolic
t-x curve, and, in addition, assumes that the apex of the

curve is at zero offset. Most standard Radon methods

cannot handle situations where the multiple reflections do
not honor these assumptions.

ARTICLE

Michelangelo, Seismic and

Seeing Whats There

Limited aperture causes edge effects and near offset

leakage for Radon methods
Radon methods are aperture-limited. As noted by Wang
(2003), the limited spatial aperture causes edge effects,
impairing the separation of primary and multiple reflections in the Radon transform domain (the events do not
transform as they should to points in tau-p space, rather,
they transform to smeared interfering lines). The limited
size of the spatial aperture of a seismic gather affects the
ability of Radon transform to separate multiple and
primary reflections. With Radon there is near offset leakage
of multiple energy.
To accommodate this shortcoming of Radon, adaptive
surgical muting or inside mutes have often been used to
remove the near offset data. To address spurious random
noise, noise burst attenuation programs are also commonly
used. This approach - inside mute accompanied by deburst - yields a reasonable looking stack but does not
preserve amplitude integrity and, in fact, completely sacrifices near offset information. This may be satisfactory if
stack is the required output, but is problematic if further
pre-stack processing is desired.
High resolution Radon de-multiple methods attempt to
overcome limitations of spatial aperture and spatial
sampling by imposing sparseness constraints in the Radon
domain. The sparcity constraints, a departure from the
conventional least-squares solution, effectively move the
transformed energy to where it would be if there were no
sampling or aperture limits. Think of it as focusing in
tau-p space: the smeared (aliased) lines become points. HR
Radon de-multiple has been useful to deal with aliasing on
far offset data and to discriminate more precisely between
close curvatures.
SRME (Surface-Related Multiple Elimination) is another
multiple attenuation tool. We have seen this approach
work well, particularly in situations where the surface
generating the multiple reflections has moderate structural
complexity; complex enough that other de-multiple
methods like Radon, tau-p decon and time domain gapped
deconvolution fail. However, for multiples from a surface
with rapidly changing 3D topography, we have found the
SRME method is limited by the assumptions behind the
technique, namely: 1) a source for every receiver and vice
versa, usually requiring interpolation and extrapolation
(potentially introducing aliasing issues which become even
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more problematic in 3D), and 2) it is difficult for SRME to get

the amplitudes correct (iterations of SRME do indeed converge
to the response without free-surface multiples when the correct
weights are used at each iteration, but not when they are
defined from the minimum energy criterion). Picture a multiple
from an irregular 3D water bottom. The multiple changes
shape, amplitude and position with offset. In fact, at mid and
far offsets, the WB multiple no longer aligns with the sea floor
topography. It is difficult for SRME methods to accommodate
this. HR Radon methods are inefficient in addressing these
diffracted multiples with shifted apexes in the cmp gathers.
Spatial filters can be frustrating

Data Example: LIFT to Attenuate Multiples

The methodology is first to perform Radon de-multiple as
needed, to identify coherent noise and to improve signal-tonoise ratio. Signal can then be modeled in a variety of ways, for
example, by an AVO equation. (In a sense, this approach to
modeling signal exploits the assumptions of Zoeppritzs equations: plane waves and reflection between two half-spaces. Due
to these assumptions, a Zoeppritz-based AVO inversion will
consider multiples and converted waves to be noise and will
exclude them in its reconstruction. Voil, primary signal is
modeled.) Then the LIFT sequence estimates and suppresses
multiple energy from the original data in an adaptive nonlinear
fashion (Figure 1).

For other kinds of coherent noise, such as air-blast, ground-roll

noise, or any coherent linear noise, spatial filters such as F-K
(frequency-wave number) transforms are commonly used.
Many of these techniques do attenuate coherent noise, but leave
frustrating mathematical artifacts that alter or distort the signal
somewhat.
To address random noise, other methods such as FX
Deconvolution have traditionally been used. The F-X prediction filter makes a general signal model assumption: that signal
is predictable by convolution filters. The seismic signals in the
frequency-offset domain are represented by complex sinusoids
in the X-direction, which are then predictable. In comparison,
random noise is unpredictable and can be rejected. Care must
be taken, especially with dealing with edges, if the amplitude
integrity of the signal is to be left intact; something which is
important for any subsequent AVO analysis.

The LIFT Approach

LIFT is an amplitude-friendly technique to attenuate noise and
multiples. LIFT is a significantly different approach to the
problem of noise attenuation than what has been done traditionally. The LIFT method was built to attenuate any kind of
noise - including multiples - while preserving the AVO integrity
of primaries. This is important if one is to carry out amplitudepreserving processing and meaningful AVO analysis, including
the possibility of AVO analysis on pre-stack migrated gathers.
LIFT General Methodology
The general method is to simultaneously model signal and
coherent noise, and then in a nonlinear adaptive fashion, attenuate noise. Signal and noise can be modeled in a variety of
ways, depending on the nature of the problem.
LIFT is not a single module or algorithm, it is an umbrella name
for a sequence of a variety of steps. Some of the steps within the
LIFT sequence will include traditional ways to describe signal
and noise - like FX Decon (for random noise), FK (for linear
noise), simulated geophone arrays (for ground roll), Fatti et al.s
AVO Equation (for primaries) or Radon transform (for multiples). The steps chosen will depend on the nature of the particular noise we are addressing.

Figure 1: A LIFT scheme to attenuate multiples.

The LIFT Technique for multiple attenuation has been found to

work well in both land and marine data. Figure 2 shows an
example of multiple attenuation in offshore data.
From left to right are zoom displays of the stacks of the input
data, the data after Radon de-multiple (to attenuate the water
bottom multiple), and after LIFT. One can see that multiple
energy from the irregular sea floor is attenuated effectively. The
question sometimes arises whether this multiple attenuation
scheme will preserve diffractions for pre-stack migration. One
can clearly see that diffraction patterns are still present after the
LIFT process. In fact, originally noise was sitting on top of the
diffraction energy, making it difficult to identify the diffractions.
The rightmost panel is the Difference display, (the difference
between Radon and LIFT), showing what LIFT removed.

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Figure 2: Zoom displays of stacks. LIFT was used to attenuate multiples; diffraction energy - desirable for subsequent pre-stack migration - is clearly preserved through the
LIFT process.

Data Example: LIFT to Attenuate Source-generated Noise

A very successful application of LIFT in land data has been to
attenuate difficult source-related noise. A typical LIFT methodology is to address ground-roll noise with array forming - a
computer simulation of geophone field arrays. Geophone
arrays in the field, spanning dimensions comparable to the
dominant wavelength of the noise, have traditionally been used
to discriminate against events on the basis of their moveout or
apparent wavelength, but long geophone arrays can greatly
reduce the frequency content of recorded data. With array
forming on the computer, the effective array length can be set
differently for each frequency considered. Carrying on with the
LIFT sequence, the source-related noise is then estimated and
suppressed (Figure 3).

Figure 4 shows a typical Alberta land shot record. Geometric

divergence correction is the only process that has been applied.
Air blast and ground roll noise are evident. Figure 5 shows the
shot record after the LIFT sequence to attenuate source-related
noise has been run.

Figure 4: Input shot record.

Figure 3: A LIFT scheme to attenuate source noise.

Figure 5: The shot record after LIFT to attenuate source-generated noise.

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Figure 6: Synthetic data.

Figure 7: Left to right: Input gather (primaries + multiples); Radon De-multiple; Difference. The Difference displays show what Radon removed.
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Figure 8: Left to right: Radon De-multiple; LIFT output; Difference. The Difference displays shows what LIFT removed.

Figure 9: Comparison of ideal (primaries only), and the gather after LIFT multiple attenuation.

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We have also found this technique works well in the challenging Mackenzie Delta area, where the seismic data collected
can be affected by permafrost, sea ice, and the deposits of the
Mackenzie River itself. Groundroll noise travels fast through
the frozen near-surface, and data recorded here often has a very
poor signal-to-noise ratio generally. The noise is typically in the
same bandwidth as the signal, making it difficult to deal with.
Historical approaches like spatial filters perform reasonably but
the results suffer from some spatial smearing, and amplitudes
of signal are not necessarily preserved. Again, the challenge is
to reduce the noise without smearing, distorting, (or creating)
signal. The results from the LIFT approach have been
welcomed by the client. The approach can be iterative and
parameters can be fine-tuned for particular datasets.

How can we know it preserves amplitudes?

Investigation of LIFTs AVO-friendliness in attenuating
multiples
To investigate LIFTs ability to attenuate multiples and to
preserve legitimate amplitude variations of primaries,
synthetic pre-stack data was generated from well log data. The
synthetic data is a simple convolutional model.
The model is shown in Figure 6 (on page 50). The model
includes Class I and Class II AVO reflectors (following
Rutherfords classification, Class I is a gas sand which is higher
impedance than the overlying material. Class I AVO is a peak
which dims with offset more rapidly than the regional seismic
response. Class II is a near-zero impedance contrast gas sand
whose reflection amplitude brightens with offset.)
The first step is Radon de-multiple (Figure 7). The Difference
display shows that Radon alone does not capture the multiple
energy at near offsets, and does not preserve primary amplitudes (note primary energy leakage on the difference display).
The LIFT technique then effectively removes residual multiple
energy that Radon could not attenuate, most notably multiple
energy at near offsets. Further, there is very little primary
energy leakage (Figure 8).
The ability of the LIFT technique to preserve primary amplitudes is illustrated more clearly on the summary display shown
in Figure 9. This display assembles the primaries-only panel
and the final LIFT output panel, and shows the difference
between the two. The primaries panel is the ideal of what one
should be left with if multiples have been removed perfectly.
The difference display shows some leakage of primary energy
at very far angles (the mute is 45 degrees). Looking back to
Figure 7, most of this leakage occurred at the Radon step,
suggesting that the Radon parameters be reviewed.
Investigation of LIFTs implications for quantitative
AVO analyses
To investigate the implications for quantitative AVO analyses,
Rp and Rs were calculated from the same synthetic pre-stack

seismic gather by solving Fatti et al.s linear approximation of

Zoeppritz equations for Rp and Rs (P- and S-impedance reflectivity). Rp and Rs were solved for four different inputs: the
primaries-only gather; primaries + multiples gather; the gather
after Radon de-multiple, and the LIFT output gather.
Compare the results to those from the primaries-only or ideal
(Figures 11 and 12). Please note that the Rp and Rs traces have
been duplicated ten times for ease of viewing.) Observe that the
AVO attributes calculated from the LIFT gather are very close
to the values calculated from the primaries-only gather. The
reflectivities calculated from the Radon gather and from the
raw gather are not very accurate, particularly in the 2.0-4.0 sec
zone in this example. Here the t-x curves of the multiples are
relatively flat: the multiples look a lot like primaries. The AVO
equation was not able to distinguish multiple from primary in
this situation. The poor Rp and Rs results calculated from the
primaries + multiples gather tell us that something must be
done to address multiples prior to AVO analysis. The poor
result from the Radon de-multiple tell us that Radon is not
sufficient. Application of the LIFT technique enables a more
accurate AVO analysis.

Limitations and Weaknesses of the LIFT

Technique
Since we need some signal to model, the input to LIFT must
have reasonable signal-to-noise ratio. If the S/N is too poor, the
LIFT approach will not give any benefit.

Warning: New Techniques May Necessitate a

New Look at Interpretations
While restoration of Michelangeloss frescoes has stirred
controversy among art historians (some saying that removing
the markings of the passage of time has impoverished the
aesthetic experience; others calling it one of the great revelations of our time) it is undeniable that the restoration has transformed the painting into a state substantially different from
what was previously known and revered. The editor of The
Art Newspaper International, put it this way: some people
liked things to look romantic and old, and cant cope with the
clarity and brilliance of what the Sistine Chapel looks like now
it has been cleaned. The analogy between art and seismic data
ends here. Seismic data is not art, and cleaning noise from
seismic data should be free of such controversies. Practiced
seismic interpreters are not emotionally attached to the
aesthetic value of their interpretation. If a multiple is obscuring
the real signal, they want to know about it, and they want it to
be dealt with properly so they can view the signal, not the
previous interpretation of signal that may have been known
and revered.
LIFT is one of those new techniques that may prompt interpretations to be re-evaluated. For example, one may need to
(or been thankful to) re-interpret a sub-salt zone after LIFT has
attenuated multiples that other methods could not handle. (We
know of one such situation, but, as is often the case, the success
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known - the interpreter views the technique

as a competitive advantage and understandably will not grant permission to show the
results.)
We encourage you to give new approaches a
try; you might end up seeing seismic in a
different way.
A beautiful thing never gives so much pain
as does failing to hear and see it. ~
Michelangelo

Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Yongyi Li for his
assistance. R

Figure 10: Various inputs to AVO analysis.

References and
Suggested Reading
Fatti, J. L., Smith, G. C. , Vail, P. J., Strauss, P. J., and Levitt,
P.R., 1994, Detection of gas in sandstone reservoirs using AVO
analysis: A 3-D seismic case history using the Geostack technique, Geophysics, 59, 1362-1376.
Rutherford, S. R., and Williams, R. H., 1989, Amplitudeversus-offset variations in gas sands: Geophysics, 54, 680-688.
Wang, Y., 2003, EAGE, Geophysical Prospecting, vol. 51,
pp 75-87

Jan Dewar is a geophysicist and technical

writer at Core Lab RTD, and is the corresponding author for this article:
jdewar@corelab.ca
Jon Downton is a Director of Research and
Development at Core Lab RTD, and is also
completing graduate studies at the
University of Calgary.
Figure 11: Rp computed from the various inputs.

Glen Larsen is a Seismic Processing Team

Leader at Core Lab RTD, specializing in
land processing.

Figure 12: Rs computed from the various inputs.

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