Dictionary:Surgical mute

A sharp division in offset-time space between elements that are retained unchanged in magnitude and those deleted entirely. As opposed to a tapered or ramped mute where the change is gradual. Usually the data muted (deleted) are those preceding and immediately following the first breaks, including shallow headwaves. Sometimes refers to a slice diagonally cutting across an x, t plot, where the values within the slice have been set equal to zero, as might be done to remove a ground-roll wavetrain.