Dennis Gabor: The father of seismic attribute analysis

Brian H. Russell

A review of the CREWES reports over the last ten years will reveal the influence of the Gabor transform on the work of Gary Margrave (e.g. Margrave et al., 2002), who has used this transform, along with his colleagues and students, to perform seismic deconvolution and migration. However, it is interesting to note that the Gabor transform was only one of three remarkable inventions in Gabor’s landmark 1946 paper: “Theory of Communication”, the others being time-frequency analysis and the complex signal. In this report, I will first give a brief discussion of time-frequency analysis and the Gabor transform, and then I will focus on Gabor’s work on the complex signal and the development of seismic attribute analysis, trying to show the link among all seismic attributes. In this way, I will show that Gabor could be considered to be the “father” of seismic attribute analysis.