3D diffraction imaging of channel and polka-dot anomalies in a shallow water area

Coastal development is rapidly expanding worldwide, and seismic anomalies observed in shallow-water environments provide valuable information for drilling hazard assessment and understanding geological processes. However, these anomalies are typically small in scale and are often obscured by dominant signals, making their interpretation challenging. In this study, we apply an integrated workflow that combines ultra-high-resolution (UHR) 3D seismic acquisition with localized rank reduction–based 3D diffraction imaging to enhance the detection and analysis of seismic anomalies in shallow-water settings. The UHR acquisition improves spatial resolution for detecting small-scale subsurface features, while the diffraction imaging suppresses dominant reflection energy and enhances diffraction responses associated with localized subsurface heterogeneities. The proposed workflow was applied to a data that is obtained from a study site in Yeongil Bay, Korea, producing a high-resolution 3D diffraction cube. In the resulting diffraction cube, dominant linear signals such as reflections, secondary bubbles, and multiples were suppressed, allowing channel and polka-dot anomalies to be more clearly delineated and facilitating the analysis of small-scale anomalies that are often obscured by dominant signals in conventional seismic data. These results demonstrate that the integration of UHR 3D seismic acquisition and diffraction imaging provides an effective approach for the characterization of small-scale seismic anomalies in shallow coastal environments.