System and method for regularizing seismic data

A computer-implemented method for characterizing a subsurface volume of interest from an irregularly sampled seismic dataset, the method comprising:

• a. receiving, at a computer processor, the irregularly sampled seismic dataset with at least five dimensions including a first spatial dimension, a second spatial dimension, an offset dimension, an azimuth dimension, and a time or depth dimension;
• b. assigning, by the computer processor, each trace of the irregularly sampled seismic dataset to a representative bin;
• c. mapping, by the computer processor, each of the traces of the irregularly sampled seismic dataset to an offset vector tile (OVT) with a calculated center azimuth;
• d. assembling, by the computer processor, an azimuth sector with all offsets of interest and a narrow range of the center azimuths from the OVTs;
• e. rotating, by the computer processor, the azimuth sector from an original orientation to align the first spatial dimension and the second spatial dimension with an inline direction and a crossline dimension determined from a seismic acquisition geometry for the irregularly sampled seismic dataset;
• f. selecting, by the computer processor, a subset of traces from the rotated azimuth sector based on a single crossline value to create an irregular 3D volume;
• g. regularizing, by the computer processor, the irregular 3D volume;
• h. repeating operations (f) and (g) for all crossline values to generate a regularly sampled azimuth sector;
• i. rotating, by the computer processor, the regularly sampled azimuth sector back to the original orientation;
• j. repeating operations (d)-(i) for all azimuth sectors to transform the irregularly sampled seismic dataset to a regularly sampled seismic dataset;
• and
• k. processing, by the computer processor, the regularly sampled seismic dataset to characterize the subsurface volume of interest.