New Interpretation Assets from Computer Assisted Interpretation

James, Huw¹, Pascal Klein² (1) Paradigm Geophysical, Houston, TX (2) Paradigm Geophysical, Pau, France

Computer assisted horizon picking can generate more interpretation assets than the structural horizon. For methods that expand from interpreter picked points following the path of best correlation, the path of progression can illuminate both the structural and depositional grain for the units responsible for the reflection.. Similarly, these methods produce quality measures for each computer assisted pick. These quality measures will vary with the noise in the seismic image and can be used to drive measures of uncertainty for the picks. These quality measures can also be used to understand the depositional grain of the units responsible for the reflector.

Recently developed computer assisted 3-D fault picking can use the interpreter's indication of a fault and then interpolate these picks and snap them to the discontinuities detected in the seismic image. These resultant surfaces can be very dense and though they depend on an interpreter to select locality these surfaces will follow the discontinuities in the image without interpreter judgment. This can provide two surfaces, one that is purely interpreter generated and the other that is snapped to the image. These two surfaces can indicate the quality of the seismic imaging or the quality of the picking as an extra interpretation asset. The comparison can then be used to drive higher quality seismic imaging or uncertainty measures for fault picks. The densely snapped picks provide detail shape information for the fault plane in both strike and dip directions which can characterize a particular fault event.