Fourier reconstruction of marine-streamer data in four spatial coordinates

Many methods exist for interpolation of seismic data in one and two spatial dimensions, but few can interpolate properly in three or four spatial dimensions. Marine multi-streamer data typically are sampled relatively well in the midpoint and absolute offset coordinates but not in the azimuth because the crossline shot coordinate is significantly under sampled. We approach the problem of interpolation of marine-streamer data in four spatial dimensions by splitting the problem into a 1D interpolation along the densely sampled streamers and a 3D Fourier reconstruction for the remaining spatial coordinates. In Fourier reconstruction, the Fourier coefficients that synthesize the nonuniformly sampled seismic data are estimated in a least-squares inversion. The method is computationally efficient, requires no subsurface information, and can handle uniform grids with missing data as well as nonuniform grids or random sampling.The output grid of the 1D interpolation in the first step is arbitrary. When the output grid has uniform inline midpoints spacing, the 3D Fourier reconstruction in the second step is performed in the crossline midpoint, absolute offset, and azimuth coordinates. When the first step outputs to uniform absolute offset, the 3D Fourier reconstruction handles the crossline/inline midpoint and the azimuth coordinates. In both cases, the main innovation is the inclusion of the azimuthal coordinate in the Fourier reconstruction. The azimuth multiplicity must be increased for the method to be successful, which means that overlap shooting is required. We have tested the algorithm on synthetic streamer data for which the proposed method outperforms an approach where the azimuthal coordinate is ignored. Potential applications are interpolation of marine streamer data to decrease the crossline source sampling for the benefit of 3D multiple prediction and regularization to reduce sampling-related differences in processing of time-lapse data