Real-time, automatic, and accurate determination of seismic signals is critical for rapid earthquake reporting and early warning. In this study, we present a correction trigger function (CTF) for automatically detecting regional seismic events and a fourth-order statistics algorithm with the Akaike information criterion (AIC) for determining the direct wave phase, based on the differences, or changes, in energy, frequency, and amplitude of the direct P- or S-waves signal and noise. Simulations suggest for that the proposed fourth-order statistics result in high resolution even for weak signal and noise variations at different amplitude, frequency, and polarization characteristics. To improve the precision of establishing the S-waves onset,fi rst a specifi c segment of P-wave seismograms is selected and the polarization characteristics of the data are obtained. Second, the S-wave seismograms that contained the specifi c segment of P-wave seismograms are analyzed by S-wave polarizationfi ltering. Finally, the S-wave phase onset times are estimated. The proposed algorithm was used to analyze regional earthquake data from the Shandong Seismic Network. The results suggest that compared with conventional methods, the proposed algorithm greatly decreased false and missed earthquake triggers, and improved the detection precision of direct P- and S-wave phases.