Machine learning based seismic data enhancement towards overcoming geophysical limitations

Abstract

Acquisition of complete data, i.e., unblended, well-sampled and broadband data, is technically desirable. Obviously, such a scenario is prohibitively expensive to realize. To deal with economic considerations in a seismic survey without seriously compromising data quality, we propose a machine-learning approach that offers an opportunity to acquire incomplete data, i.e., blended, sparsely-sampled and narrowband data, while still benefitting from being able to process complete data. In this study, we utilize a deep convolutional neural network. The incomplete data are fed into the applied network that simultaneously performs suppression of blending noise, reconstruction of missing traces and extrapolation of low frequencies such that prediction of the complete data is attainable. We validate the performance of the proposed method using both synthetic and field datasets. Acquisition scenarios implemented to generate incomplete datasets impose a significant reduction of data size in the frequency-space domain. Despite the limited information available in the input data, the prediction results obtained from both numerical and field data examples clearly confirm that the proposed machine-learning approach is capable of dealing with deficiencies in the incomplete data and subsequently deriving the complete data of sufficient quality. In addition to suppression of blending noise and reconstruction of missing traces, no discernible difference in prediction errors between preexisting and extrapolated frequencies is observed, which is hardly realizable with existing geophysics-based approaches. As a consequence, the proposed scheme allows for optimal data enhancement even when seismic acquisition is performed in a blended, sparsely-sampled and narrowband fashion.