An efficient and robust method for automatic first arrival picking using under-sampled fast high resolution Radon transform

A new technique for the automatic picking of first breaks that can be used for dynamite, or vibroseis shot records, based on compressive sensing and linear Radon transform (RT), is presented in this paper. The proposed technique is automatic, robust and computationally more efficient than the existing methods. The technique was tested on a synthetic seismic data set with various levels of additive white Gaussian noise and different compression levels. The developed method along with modified Coppen's method were tested on real shot records, for which first arrival picking was difficult. The estimated picks were also compared with the manual (actual) picks. The proposed method provides much better performance than the modified version of Coppen's method. Therefore, since the new method requires fewer samples than existing techniques, it is believed that the proposed technique is an appropriate new addition to the existing methods for the first arrival picking.