Plane-wave Sobel attribute for discontinuity enhancement in seismic images

Published as Geophysics, 82, WB63-WB69, (2017)

Plane-wave Sobel attribute for discontinuity enhancement in seismic images

Mason Phillips and Sergey Fomel

The University of Texas at Austin,
John A. and Katherine G. Jackson School of Geosciences,
Bureau of Economic Geology,
Austin, Texas, USA

Abstract:

Discontinuity enhancement attributes are commonly used to facilitate the interpretation process by enhancing edges in seismic images and providing a quantitative measure of the significance of discontinuous features. These attributes require careful pre-processing to maintain geologic features and suppress acquisition and processing artifacts which may be artificially detected as a geologic edge.

We propose the plane-wave Sobel attribute, a modification of the classic Sobel filter, by orienting the filter along seismic structures using plane-wave destruction and plane-wave shaping. The plane-wave Sobel attribute can be applied directly to a seismic image to efficiently and effectively enhance discontinuous features, or to a coherence image to create a sharper and more detailed image. Two field benchmark data examples with many faults and channel features from offshore New Zealand and offshore Nova Scotia demonstrate the effectiveness of this method compared to conventional coherence attributes. The results are reproducible using the Madagascar software package.

Plane-wave Sobel attribute for discontinuity enhancement in seismic images