Data structures for fast searching of SEG-Y seismic data

An index structure for seismic data was designed using a modified PR quadtree data structure and implemented in the C++ computer language. To test the software and to evaluate the implementation of the structures, experiments were carried out with data from a marine seismic survey in the Mid-Pacific Ocean. The section of the survey used spanned 6 days, consisted of ten seismic lines (total of 1904 line kilometres) with a total of 39,720 traces. The seismic data tin SEG-Y format) required 335.8 Mbyte storage on disk. Experimental results of range searching tin two dimensions) with varying query window sizes shows that less than 0.1 s is required to determine which seismic lines intersect the query window. The index structure occupies 9.19 Mbyte (about 2.74% of the original data size) and requires 34.5 s to build using a UNIX(R) workstation. The modified PR quadtree index structure was compared to a standard PR quadtree index structure, and found to require less time (by up to 67%) to perform a 2D range search. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.