Texture attributes for detecting salt bodies in seismic data

Texture-based methods have proven to be useful in the detection of salt bodies in seismic data. In this abstract, we present three computationally inexpensive texture attributes that strongly differentiate salt bodies from other geological formations. The proposed method combines the three texture attributes along with region boundary smoothing for delineating salt boundaries. Our first proposed attribute is directionality, which differentiates between regions where texture lacks any specific direction (potentially, salt) and areas with directional texture. The second attribute is the smoothness of texture, while the third is based on edge content. Our results show that the directionality attribute effectively detects salt bodies in all the seismic images used in testing. The other two attributes correct the false positives detected by the directionality. The overall results show that the proposed method can fairly detect salt regions when compared to manual interpretation.