Seismic Data Interpretation using Digital Image Processing

ABDULLATIF A. AL-SHUHAIL is an Associate Professor of Geophysics at King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM). He got his BS from KFUPM in Geophysics in 1988, his MS and PhD in Geophysics from Texas A&M University at College Station in 1993 and 1998, respectively. Since then he has been teaching and advising at KFUPM. He founded and directed the Near Surface Seismic Investigation Consortium at KFUPM in 2006-2008. He has authored and co-authored several papers in the field of petroleum seismic exploration. He is an active member of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists, the European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers, and the Dhahran Geoscience Society. His interests include near-surface effects on petroleum seismic data, seismic investigation of fractured reservoirs, and ground penetrating radar. SALEH A. AL-DOSSARY works in the Exploration Application Services Department in Saudi Aramco Oil Company, developing new seismic processing, attributes and pre-stack depth-migration algorithms. In 1991, Saleh received his B.S. degree in Computer Science with a minor in Geophysics from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Socorro, NM. He received his M.S. degree in 1997 from Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, and in 2004 he received his Ph.D. from the University of Houston, TX, both in Geophysics. Saleh holds five patents, and is an applicant for five additional patents in seismic edge preserving and detection technology. He is the author and coauthor of several articles published by the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG). Saleh received the Distinguished Employee Award in Saudi Aramco's Exploration Application Services Department in 1999, the Outstanding Student Award from the University of Houston in 2003 and the Saudi Aramco Excellence Award in 2015. WAIL A. MOUSA is an Associate Professor with the Electrical Engineering Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM). He received the B.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering and mathematical sciences and M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from KFUPM, in 2000, 2001, and 2003, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electronics and electrical engineering from the University of Leeds in 2006. Between 2003 and 2009, he worked as a Research Scientist on applied signal processing for geology and geophysics at the Schlumberger. His research interests include digital signal processing and its application in geophysics, with particular emphasis on Seismic Data Processing. Additional interests include design and implementation of digital filters including wavefield extrapolation filters, image segmentation, pattern recognition, and classification and their applications related to geophysical and geological data.

Foreword iii Preface xi 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Image Processing of Exploration Seismic Data 1 1.2 Exploration Seismic Data: From Acquisition to Interpretation 1 1.2.1 Seismic Data Acquisition 2 1.2.2 Seismic Data Processing 2 1.2.3 Seismic Data Interpretation 2 1.3 The Seismic Convolution Model 3 1.4 Summary 4 2 Seismic Data Interpretation 7 2.1 Introduction 7 2.2 Structural Features 12 2.2.1 Faults 12 2.2.2 Folds 23 2.2.3 Diapirs 23 2.3 Stratigraphic Features 23 2.3.1 Channels 28 2.3.2 Reefs 28 2.3.3 Truncation 28 2.4 Seismic interpretation Tools 34 2.4.1 Seismic Sequence Stratigraphy 34 2.4.2 Seismic Facies Analysis 40 2.4.3 Direct Hydrocarbon Indicators (DHI) 40 2.4.4 Tying Seismic and Well Data 49 2.4.5 Seismic Modeling 50 2.4.6 Time-to-Depth Conversion 51 2.4.7 Seismic Attributes 53 2.5 pitfalls in Seismic Interpretation 56 2.6 Summary 62 2.7 Problems and Computer Assignments 64 3 Seismic Image Enhancement in the Spatial Domain 79 3.1 Introduction 79 3.1.1 The Mean (Running Average) Filter 80 3.2 The Median Filter 83 3.3 The edge preserving smoothing algorithm 85 3.3.1 2D structure-preserving smoothing 87 3.4 Wavelet Based Smoothing 90 3.4.1 Method 90 3.4.2 Sharpening Filter 94 3.5 Summary 94 3.6 Problems and Computer Assignments 96 4 Seismic Image Enhancement in the Spectral Domain 99 4.1 Introduction 99 4.2 The Fourier Transform 99 4.3 Filtering in the Spectra Domain 103 4.4 Spectral Attributes 103 4.5 Summary 105 4.6 Problems and Computer Assignments 106 5 Seismic Attributes 109 5.1 Introduction 109 5.2 Detection of interesting regions from time or depth 3D slices using seismic attributes 109 5.3 2D Numerical gradients edge detectors operators 111 5.4 Application to Real Seismic Data 114 5.5 2D Second order Derivative Operator 114 5.5.1 The coherence attribute 121 5.5.2 The dip attribute 124 5.6 The curvature attribute 126 5.7 Curvature of the Surface 129 5.7.1 Curve, velocity and curvature 129 5.7.2 Surface, tangent plane and norm 130 5.8 Shape operator, normal curvature and principal curvature 131 5.8.1 Normal curvature 131 5.8.2 Shape operator 132 5.8.3 The principal curvatures 132 5.8.4 Summary of calculation of principal curvature for a surface 133 5.9 The Randomness attribute 134 5.10 Technique for Two Dimensional Image 135 5.10.1 Problem Statement and Preliminaries 135 5.10.2 Review of Fast Noise Variance Estimation Algorithm 137 5.10.3 Design Mask by Constrained Optimization 137 5.11 The Spectral Decomposition attribute 140 5.12 Summary 143 5.13 Problems and Computer Assignments 144 6 Color Display of Seismic Images 151 6.1 Introduction 151 6.2 Color Models and Useful Color Bars 153 6.2.1 The RGB Model 153 6.2.2 The CMY Model 154 6.2.3 The HSI Model 154 6.2.4 Useful Color Bars 156 6.3 Overlay and Mixed Displays of Seismic Attribute Images 157 6.4 Summary 158 6.5 Problems and Computer Assignments 159 7 Seismic Image Segmentation 163 7.1 Introduction 163 7.2 Basic Seismic Image Segmentation 164 7.3 Advanced Seismic Image Segmentation 165 7.3.1 Color Based Segmentation 165 7.3.2 Graph-based Segmentation 168 7.4 Automatic Fault Extraction 169 7.5 Summary 170 Glossary 177 Index 183