An iterative approach to seismic skeletonization

In this paper pattern recognition techniques are applied to the automatic tracking of seismic reflectors. We call this procedure seismic skeletonization, since it reduces a seismic section into a line drawing corresponding to seismic reflectors. The procedure uses an iterative approach. Strong reflectors are tracked first; weaker reflectors are tracked at later iterations. At any iteration, the tracking is confined to the areas delineated by the reflectors already tracked in a previous iteration. Reflectors are tracked by correlating neighboring seismic traces. An algorithm called the binary consistency‐checking (BCC) scheme is used to correlate three traces at a time. The combined use of the iterative approach and the BCC scheme is efficient, emulating human interpretation and incorporating “geologic trend” into the results.