Color display of the localized spectrum

This paper develops a new display technique for seismic cross‐sections, called spectral color. The need to visualize frequency information in seismic data is recognized uniformly and often is accomplished through the color display of instantaneous frequency. The spectral content of a reflected event can carry information about the reflecting horizon’s characteristics which will not be resolved in the instantaneous state of the record. Spectral color is devised to overcome the problem of displaying an entire localized spectrum at each time sample and offset of a seismic section. The localized spectrum is calculated with a relatively new time‐frequency representation called the S-transform, which combines a Fourier technique with adaptive windowing in the frequency domain. A color (RGB triplet) based on the localized spectral content is calculated and the pixel is displayed at the appropriate position in the seismic section. As a result, the seismic cross‐section is displayed in an intuitive manner that is ...