Abstract: The water disaster of sandstone on the roof of the coal seriously affects the safe production of coal mines, and the effective identification of channel sand is of great significance for mine water control. Channel identification based on seismic data is one of the effective ways, but channel sand is not the target layer of coal mine exploration, so the research degree is low, and in seismic data, channel is a linear and isolated geological anomaly wihich is often ignored, so this technology is not mature enough in coalfields. Based on the channel discovered in Neogene overlying coal strata from high density seismic data of a coal mine in Huaibei area, the high density observation system is transformed into the narrow band observation system after extracting 8 lines, this paper discusses the imaging quality of conventional observation system and high density observation system in cross section and plane. The results show that the maximum offset of 0.8 times buried depth and full azimuth are the more favorable for channel imaging. Therefore, high density observation system has a good image of the river channel, especially in the amplitude attributes.