Simulating the procedure of manual seismic horizon picking

Abstract

Manual seismic horizon picking is the least efficient interpretation technique in terms of time and effort. Loop-tie is a key “element” and the most time-consuming task in manual horizon picking, which ensures the accuracy of horizon picking. Auto-picking techniques have been around since the early 1980s. However, there are few studies simulating the procedure of manual seismic horizon picking and quantitatively evaluating the auto-picked horizons. In our proposed method, we perform auto-picking on inline and crossline seismic vertical slices independently, similar to the manual horizon picking procedure. We then evaluate the picked horizons using a loop-tie step similar to the loop-tie checking in manual horizon picking. To simulate the loop-tie step in manual picking, we define two dip attributes for each time sample of seismic traces, which are “left” and “right” reflector dips. We only preserve the portions of the tracked horizons that meet the defined loop-tie checking. Next, we merge the tracked horizons centered at the seeded seismic traces. The two-way traveltime of the merged horizons function as “hard” controls for the final step of auto-picking. We finally use the seismic dip attribute to track the horizons over the seismic survey under the hard controls. The real data demonstrate that our algorithm can extract accurate horizons near discontinuities such as faults and unconformities.

Dynamic subwindow matching: A new similarity measure for seismic facies analysis

“…However, noisy seismic data usually introduce inaccuracy into matched point pairs (Lou et al ., 2021; Zhang et al ., 2020). Moreover, seismic reflection events are described by a continuous segment of a waveform signal because of the continuity of seismic wavelets.…”

“…The dynamic time warping algorithm is often introduced to resolve the problem of reflection time alignment in the task of horizon interpretation (Shi et al, 2020), non-stretching (Jin et al, 2015) and well-to-seismic tying (Herrera and van der Baan, 2014). However, noisy seismic data usually introduce inaccuracy into matched point pairs (Lou et al, 2021;Zhang et al, 2020). Moreover, seismic reflection events are described by a continuous segment of a waveform signal because of the continuity of seismic wavelets.…”