Liguo Han

Normalized edge detection, and the horizontal extent and depth of geophysical anomalies

Edge detection is an image processing technique for finding the boundaries of objects within images. It is typically used to interpret gravity and magnetic data, and find the horizontal boundaries of geological bodies. Large deviations between model and true edges are common because of the interference of depth and errors in computing the derivatives; thus, edge detection methods cannot provide information about the depth of the source. To simultaneously obtain the horizontal extent and depth of geophysical anomalies, we use normalized edge detection filters, which normalize the edge detection function at different depths, and the maxima that correspond to the location of the source. The errors between model and actual edges are minimized as the depth of the source decreases and the normalized edge detection method recognizes the extent of the source based on the maxima, allowing for reliable model results. We demonstrate the applicability of the normalized edge detection filters in defining the horizontal extent and depth using synthetic and actual aeromagnetic data.

A fracture enhancement method based on the histogram equalization of eigenstructure-based coherence

Eigenstructure-based coherence attributes are efficient and mature techniques for large-scale fracture detection. However, in horizontally bedded and continuous strata, buried fractures in high grayscale value zones are difficult to detect. Furthermore, middle- and small-scale fractures in fractured zones where migration image energies are usually not concentrated perfectly are also hard to detect because of the fuzzy, clouded shadows owing to low grayscale values. A new fracture enhancement method combined with histogram equalization is proposed to solve these problems. With this method, the contrast between discontinuities and background in coherence images is increased, linear structures are highlighted by stepwise adjustment of the threshold of the coherence image, and fractures are detected at different scales. Application of the method shows that it can also improve fracture cognition and accuracy.

Separation of inhomogeneous blended seismic data

The frequencies of sources involved in conventional blended acquisition are the same. Each source transmits the full frequency band, and in general, significant effort is required to successfully produce and operate wideband sources. To solve this problem, inhomogeneous blended or decentralized blended acquisition is used, in which the dominant frequency and bandwidth of the source units in a blended array are not equal. When the inhomogeneous and conventional blending acquisitions adopt the same geometry and separation methods, the former has low signal-to-blending noise ratio. Therefore, we present a new separation method for such blended acquisition based on the synchrosqueezed wavelet transform. The proposed method offers better separation quality and decreases the computation time to approximately 1/3.

Seismic random noise suppression using an adaptive nonlocal means algorithm

Nonlocal means filtering is a noise attenuation method based on redundancies in image information. It is also a nonlocal denoising method that uses the self-similarity of an image, assuming that the valid structures of the image have a certain degree of repeatability that the random noise lacks. In this paper, we use nonlocal means filtering in seismic random noise suppression. To overcome the problems caused by expensive computational costs and improper filter parameters, this paper proposes a block-wise implementation of the nonlocal means method with adaptive filter parameter estimation. Tests with synthetic data and real 2D post-stack seismic data demonstrate that the proposed algorithm better preserves valid seismic information and has a higher accuracy when compared with traditional seismic denoising methods (e.g., f-x deconvolution), which is important for subsequent seismic processing and interpretation.

Passive-source multitaper-spectral method based low-frequency data reconstruction for active seismic sources

Passive seismic data contain large amounts of low-frequency information. To effectively extract and compensate active seismic data that lack low frequencies, we propose a multitaper spectral reconstruction method based on multiple sinusoidal tapers and derive equations for multisource and multitrace conditions. Compared to conventional cross correlation and deconvolution reconstruction methods, the proposed method can more accurately reconstruct the relative amplitude of recordings. Multidomain iterative denoising improves the SNR of retrieved data. By analyzing the spectral characteristics of passive data before and after reconstruction, we found that the data are expressed more clearly after reconstruction and denoising. To compensate for the low-frequency information in active data using passive seismic data, we match the power spectrum, supplement it, and then smooth it in the frequency domain. Finally, we use numerical simulation to verify the proposed method and conduct prestack depth migration using data after low-frequency compensation. The proposed power-matching method adds the losing low frequency information in the active seismic data using the low-frequency information of passivesource seismic data. The imaging of compensated data gives a more detailed information of deep structures.

Frequency-domain auto-adapting full waveform inversion with blended source and frequency-group encoding

As a high quality seismic imaging method, full waveform inversion (FWI) can accurately reconstruct the physical parameter model for the subsurface medium. However, application of the FWI in seismic data processing is computationally expensive, especially for the three-dimension complex medium inversion. Introducing blended source technology into the frequency-domain FWI can greatly reduce the computational burden and improve the efficiency of the inversion. However, this method has two issues: first, crosstalk noise is caused by interference between the sources involved in the encoding, resulting in an inversion result with some artifacts; second, it is more sensitive to ambient noise compared to conventional FWI, therefore noisy data results in a poor inversion. This paper introduces a frequency-group encoding method to suppress crosstalk noise, and presents a frequency-domain auto-adapting FWI based on source-encoding technology. The conventional FWI method and source-encoding based FWI method are combined using an auto-adapting mechanism. This improvement can both guarantee the quality of the inversion result and maximize the inversion efficiency.

Viscoelastic characteristics of low-frequency seismic wave attenuation in porous media

Mesoscopic fluid flow is the major cause of wave attenuation and velocity dispersion at seismic frequencies in porous rocks. The Johnson model provides solutions for the frequency-dependent quality factor and phase velocity in partially saturated porous media with pore patches of arbitrary shapes. We use the Johnson model to derive approximations for the quality factor Q at the high and low frequency limit, and obtain the approximate equation for Qmin based on geophysical and geometric parameters. A more accurate equation for Qmin is obtained after correcting for the linear errors between the exact and approximate Q values. The complexity of the pore patch shape affects the maximum attenuation of Qmin and the transition frequency ftr; furthermore, the effect on ftr is stronger than that on Qmin. Numerical solutions to Biot’s equation are computationally intensive; thus, we build an equivalent viscoelastic model on the basis of the Zener model, which well approximates the wave attenuation and dispersion in porous rocks in the seismic band.

L1 norm optimal solution match processing in the wavelet domain

Greater attention has been paid to vintage-merge processing of seismic data and extracting more valuable information by the geophysicist. A match filter is used within many important areas such as splicing seismic data, matching seismic data with different ages and sources, 4-D seismic monitoring, and so on. The traditional match filtering method is subject to many restrictions and is usually difficult to overcome the impact of noise. Based on the traditional match filter, we propose the wavelet domain L1 norm optimal matching filter. In this paper, two different types of seismic data are decomposed to the wavelet domain, different detailed effective information is extracted for L1-norm optimal matching, and ideal results are achieved. Based on the model test, we find that the L1 norm optimal matching filter attenuates the noise and the waveform, amplitude, and phase coherence of result signals are better than the conventional method. The field data test shows that, with our method, the seismic events in the filter results have better continuity which achieves the high precision seismic match requirements.

Inverting reservoir parameters in a two-phase fractured medium with a niche genetic algorithm

In this paper we calculate a synthetic medium surface displacement response that is consistent with real measurement data by applying the least-square principle and a niche genetic algorithm to the parameters inversion problem of the wave equation in a two-phase medium. We propose a niche genetic multi-parameter (including porosity, solid phase density and fluid phase density) joint inversion algorithm based on a two-phase fractured medium in the BISQ model. We take the two-phase fractured medium of the BISQ model in a two-dimensional half space as an example, and carry out the numerical reservoir parameters inversion. Results show that this method is very convenient for solving the parameters inversion problem for the wave equation in a two-phase medium, and has the advantage of strong noise rejection. Relative to conventional genetic algorithms, the niche genetic algorithm based on a sharing function can not only significantly speed up the convergence, but also improve the inversion precision.

Plane wave migration in TI media

Plane wave migration in vertical transversely isotropic (VTI) media and tilted transversely isotropic (TTI) media is studied in this paper. We combine the theory of plane wave migration in isotropic media with the implicit finite-difference (IFD) extrapolation operator in TI (VTI and TTI) media, based on which, we extend plane wave migration to VTI and TTI media. Synthetic Hess VTI data and TTI data verify the effectiveness of the method. Compared with conventional shot-profile migration in TI media, plane wave migration largely reduces the computation cost with the same image quality, and has the advantage on imaging special steep reflectors. Plane wave migration in TI media provides a new thinking way for anisotropic studies.