Interactive 3-D computation of fault surfaces using level sets

Abstract

Deformable implicit surfaces, implemented with level set methods, have demonstrated a great potential in the computational sciences for applications such as modeling, simulation, and segmentation. They allow implicit handling of complex topologies deformed by operations where large changes can occur without destroying the level set representation. The use of level set techniques for the computation and segmentation of planelike and high positive curvature features is nontrivial. We present a technique for representing and extracting fault surfaces from 3-D seismic attribute data such that 2-manifolds can be interactively computed and segmented. We present our approach as an interactive workflow that generates highly accurate fault surfaces.

Estimating fault displacements in seismic images

“…By following these steps sequentially, one obtains fault curves as well as the displacement vector field defined in section 1.1. If one omits the second-stage pattern analysis, one can get a fault displacement zone which is sim-ilar to the fault zone model estimated by Kadlec et al (2008).…”

“…These discontinuities are easily detected by human interpreters. Because faults never consist of a single fracture the term "fault zone" is sometimes used (Kadlec et al, 2008). However, in this paper, we consider a fault to be a single curve.…”

“…However, in this paper, we consider a fault to be a single curve. Seismic image processing today routinely includes steps to highlight the locations of faults (Bahorich and Farmer, 1995;Cohen and Coifman, 2002;Gibson et al, 2005;Al-Dossary and Marfurt, 2006;Kadlec et al, 2008;Hale, 2009b). That processing cannot yet reliably estimate the displacements along the faults.…”

Semiautomated fault interpretation based on seismic attributes

“…Cohen et al (2006) propose a workflow, which contains four steps to detect and extract fault surfaces in 3D volumes, resulting in a set of one-pixel-thick labeled fault surfaces. Kadlec et al (2008) present a method to model faults surface using a growing surface strategy while Dorn et al (2012) generated fault surfaces through azimuth scanning on horizontal slices, and dip scanning on vertical slices.…”

Fault surfaces and fault throws from 3D seismic images

“…Therefore, various fault tracking methods, including those proposed by Pedersen et al (2002Pedersen et al ( , 2003, Admasu et al (2006), Kadlec et al (2008) and Kadlec (2011), have been developed to extract such surfaces.…”