It has been observed that pumping a mini-frac prior to a TSO Frac-pack can impact the effectiveness of the frac-pack. The calculated fluid loss parameters determined in the diagnostic test are often not valid for the main fracture design due to the residual effect of the mini-frac and/or step-rate fluids. A technique will be presented in this paper which allows the calculated fluid loss parameters from the diagnostic test to be used reliably without excessive waiting time for the reservoir to recover to its original leak off characteristics. Fifty plus treatments were evaluated to develop a technique which makes this possible. The use of this technique resulted in a significant change in the success of the TSO designed treatments - success being a TSO type pressure increase while pumping. The success rate to achieve designed TSO, by incorporating the changes described in the paper, was increased over 20 percent with a reduction in time between diagnostic tests and the main frac. In the wells associated with this paper, a borate-crosslinked fluid was used for a mini-frac treatment followed by a step-rate test prior to the main proppant laden frac-pack. The fluid was designed with minimal polymer loading for the well conditions. The resulting mini-frac tests had low fluid efficiencies. It was originally thought that using this fluid, followed by injection of a linear step-rate fluid, would minimize the changes observed in fluid efficiency between the diagnostic test and the main fracture treatment. However, the effect of the diagnostic test on fluid leak off still resulted in less than desired TSO predictability. A technique of adding a pH control additive into the final portion of the step-rate test fluid was found to successfully allow the use of the observed diagnostic test results, honoring the efficiency from the mini-frac test. The quantity and placement of the pH control agent in the step-rate protocol were dependent upon well conditions. The waiting time between the diagnostic test and the main treatment was reduced since a positive, controlled change was applied. The optimum pH reduction for the desired effect was determined in the laboratory and designed into each treatment depending upon well conditions.

Python has become a widely used programming language for scientific research. However, python’s computational speed is limited when compared with other languages. This work presents an upgraded open-source imaging software based on python, which is capable of acquiring, processing, and displaying B-mode images in real-time for a high-frequency phased array imaging system. Ultrasound systems, considered to be real-time, display images at a frame rate of >20 Hz. This software uses 3 central processing units (CPUs) for parallel processing. In addition, Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) parallel computing is achieved by employing OpenCL commands and executing them directly on the GPU. New features, such as frame weighted averaging, color flow overlay and image enhancement, were also implemented. Parallel computing increased the displayed frame rate in general B-mode from 20 Hz to 35 Hz. B-mode + color flow overlay was increased from 15 Hz to 29 Hz and enhanced B-mode (applying edge detection, blur, and FFT filtering) was increased from 14 Hz to 28 Hz. Finally, enhanced B-mode + color flow overlay frame rate was increased from 8 Hz to 23 Hz. Thus, even more advanced ultrasound techniques, such as shear wave elastography might be developed using the python language without compromising the frame rate.