A 3D sketch-based formulation to model salt bodies from seismic data

Accurate delineation of geobodies is one of the major tasks of hydrocarbon exploration from three-dimensional seismic data. Salt bodies, in particular, are one of the toughest geobodies to model. Their natural process of formation leads to their complex geometry and topology. With the increasing size of acquisition data every year, traditional manual delineation methods become increasingly labor-intensive. On the other hand, it remains a significant challenge to extract salt surfaces automatically from seismic data without human intervention. We present an interactive and semi-automatic sketch-based modeling approach to help interpreters model salt bodies by directly deforming the surface of a pre-existing mesh. This mesh may be an inaccurate result of an automatic method or a crude and simple initial surface. We used our method to model salt domes from two public three-dimensional seismic volumes. The results indicate that, with our proposed approach, a user can obtain suitable meshes of salt bodies in a process that is intuitive and less prone to errors.