Using Steerable Filters to Map Geological Features from HRAM Data of the Foothills of Northeastern British Columbia, Canada

In the last decade several techniques have been developed to enhance geophysical data in order to extract subtle features that reflect the structural geology of the area. These techniques include curvelet, ridglet and wavelet analysis. Although these techniques provide a powerful tool in extracting linear features from geophysical data, they lack the power to resolve curvilinear or circular features. We believe that curvilinear and circular features are important to map because they reflect certain geological structures such as folds, impact structures and kimberlite pipes that might have significant impact on geophysical data interpretation. For this reason, we tested an image enhancement technique based on steerable filters to map linear, curvilinear and circular features from High Resolution AeroMagnetic (HRAM) data. We tested the steerable filters technique on HRAM data from the Foothills of Northeastern British Columbia. The preliminary results of the test are very encouraging. We were able to extract useful features that appear to be related to the geological structure of the area.