@article{eage:/content/journals/10.1111/1365-2478.12764, author = "Liu, Zhining and Song, Chengyun and She, Bin and Yao, Xingmiao and Hu, Guangmin", title = "Connectivity constrained segmentation of geologic features", journal= "Geophysical Prospecting", year = "2019", volume = "67", number = "5", pages = "1369-1378", doi = "https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2478.12764", url = "https://www.earthdoc.org/content/journals/10.1111/1365-2478.12764", publisher = "European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers", issn = "1365-2478", type = "Journal Article", keywords = "Seismics", keywords = "Reservoir geophysics", keywords = "Connectivity constraint", keywords = "Segmentation", keywords = "Interpretation", keywords = "Geologic features", abstract = "ABSTRACT Segmentation of geologic features plays a significant role in seismic interpretation. Based on the segmentation results, interpreters can readily recognize the shape and distribution of geologic features in three‐dimensional space and conduct further quantitative analysis. Usually, there are mainly two steps for the segmentation of geologic features: the first step is to extract seismic attributes that can highlight the occurrence of geologic features, and the second step is to apply the segmentation algorithm on the seismic attribute volumes. However, the occurrence of geologic features is not always corresponding to the anomaly value on the seismic attribute volumes and vice versa because of several factors, such as noise in the seismic data, the limited resolution of seismic images and the limited effectiveness of the seismic attribute. Therefore, the segmentation results, which are generated solely based on seismic attributes, are not sufficient to give an accurate depiction of geologic features. Aiming at this problem, we introduce the connectivity constraint into the process of segmentation based the assumption that for one single geologic feature all of its components should be connected to each other. Benefiting from this global constraint, the segmentation results can precisely exclude the interference by false negatives on seismic attribute volumes. However, directly introducing the connectivity constraint into segmentation would face the risk that the segmentation results would deteriorate significantly because of false positives with relatively large area when the connectivity constraints are enforced. Therefore, based on the seismic attribute that highlights the boundary of geologic feature, we further propose a post‐processing technique, called pruning, to refine the segmentation results. By taking the segmentation of the channel as an example, we demonstrate that the proposed method is able to preserve the connectivity in the process of segmentation and generate better segmentation results on the field data.", }