First break picking

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First-break picking detecting or picking the onset arrivals of refracted signals from all the
signals received by receiver arrays and produced by a particular source signal generation. It is
also called first arrival picking or first break detection. First-break picking can be done
automatically, manually or as a combination of both. With the development of computer
science and the size of seismic surveys, automatic picking is often preferred.[1]

Contents
1 Significance

2 History of First Break Picking

3 Methods of Automatic First Break Picking

o 3.1 STA/LTA ratio Method[8]

o 3.2 Multi-Window Method[7]

4 Available Code

5 Future Trend of the Topic

6 Notes

Significance
First-break picks associated with the refracted arrival times are used in an inversion scheme
to study the near-surface low-velocity zone and subsequent determination of static
corrections. Static correction is a correction applied to geophysical data, especially seismic
data, to compensate for the effect of near-surface irregularities, differences in the elevation of
shots and geophones, or any application to correct the positions of source and receivers.

History of First Break Picking

Gelchinsky and Shtivelman[2](1983) used correlation properties of signals and applied a
statistical criterion for the estimation of first arrivals time.

Coppens[3](1985) calculated the ratio of energy of seismogram of the two windows and used
that to differentiate in signal and noise.
Michael D. McCormark et al.[4](1993) introduced a backpropagation neural network (BNN)
method. The Neural network which edits seismic data or pick first breaks was trained by
users, who were just selecting and presenting to the network examples of trace edits or
refraction picks. The network then changes internal weights iteratively until it can reproduce
the examples accurately provided by the users.

Fabio Boschetti et al.[5](1996) introduce a fractal-based algorithm which detects the presence
of a signal by analyzing the variation in fractal dimension along the trace. This method works
when signal-to-noise ratio is small, but it is considerably slow.

A direct correlation method was introduced by Joseph et al.[6](1999) which was developed for
use in highly time-resolved, low-noise signals acquired in the laboratory. In this method, the
greatest value of Pearson's correlation coefficient between segments of observed waveforms
near the pulse onset and at an appropriate reference serves as the time determination criterion.

Zuolin Chen, et al.[7](2005) introduced a multi-window algorithm to detect the first break. In
this method, three moving windows were used and the averages of absolute amplitudes in
each window need to be calculated, then ratios based on the averages of the windows provide
standards to differentiate signals from unwanted noise.

Wong et al.[8](2009) introduced STA/LTA ratio method. This method is similar as Coppens[3]
algorithm. The difference is to do the ratio of two averages of energy between a short-term
window and a long-term window, which is denoted as STA/LTA (short-term average/long-
term average), instead of calculating the ratio of energy of seismogram of the two windows in
Coppens algorithm.

Methods of Automatic First Break Picking

STA/LTA ratio Method[8]

This method is similar as Coppens (1985) algorithm. The difference is to do the ratio of two
averages of energy between a short-term window and a long-term window, which is denoted
as STA/LTA (short-term average/long-term average), instead of calculating the ratio of energy
of seismogram of the two windows in Coppens algorithm. The numerical derivative of the
ratio can be defined as,

where ri+1 is the STA/LTA ratio at time index i+1, and ri is the STA/LTA ratio at time index i.
For noise-free seismograms, the maximum value of the numerical derivative of the STA/LTA
ratio is close to the time of the first arrival.

Wong et al. (2009) modified the algorithm of the energy ratio method, where they named the
method as modified energy ratio. In this method, they define the energy ratio as,
where xi is the times series representing a seismogram with the time index i=1, 2 N. and
the number of points in an energy window is ne. Then, the modified energy ratio is defined as

The peak of the modified energy ratio er3i is very closed to the time of first arrivals on noise-
free seismograms.

Multi-Window Method[7]

This method needs to calculate the averages of absolute amplitudes from a seismic trace by
using three moving time windows before and after each time point (sample).

When the instantaneous absolute amplitude exceeds an automatically adjusted threshold,

ratios based on the averages of the windows over previous time samples provide standards to
differentiate signals from unwanted noise.

The multi-window automatic P phase picker operates in the time-domain. It includes

procedures to define: time windows, standards, corresponding thresholds and waveform
correction.

1. The averages of absolute amplitudes within BTA (Before Term Average), ATA (After Term
Average) and DTA (Delayed Term Average) windows are respectively defined as follows:

Standards R2(t) and R3(t) are used for the discrimination of high-amplitude short-duration and
long-duration noise.

2.Thresholds is defined as
where Em is mean and Esd is standard deviation; p is the number of shifted samples; is the
coefficient to adjust the height of the first threshold and is taken to be 3. From this equation it
is obvious that H1(t) is automatically adjusted with the variance of the background noise.

3. H1(t) is defined larger than most pre-existing noise levels, and the instantaneous absolute
amplitude at the trigger time point is higher than H1(t),according to the configuration of the
first arrival of an event the real onset time must be earlier than the trigger time point. A
waveform correction should be used to compensate this belated onset time. For an impulsive
first arrival, the height of the absolute amplitude and the representative gradient at the trigger
point can be used to accomplish the correction.

Available Code
Potash SU is a package including Seismic Unix style codes developed by Balazs Nemeth, it
provides a subroutine called simple window-based first break picker, the figure shows the
seismic images before and after the application of subroutine.

Right one is before first break picking, left one is after first break picking

Future Trend of the Topic

Methods of Picking: automatic first-break picking has played an important role in seismic
data processing, and directly influences the quality of seismic sections. Because of the
increase of seismic survey size, more efficient and fast first break picking methods are
needed, with parallel methods being preferred.

Application of First Break detection: Traditionally the geophysicist uses first breaks for static
correction. First break signal can also be used as observation data for history matching.