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Geophysical Prospecting, 2016 doi: 10.1111/1365-2478.12381

A texture-based region growing algorithm for volume extraction

in seismic data
M.G. Orozco-del-Castillo1,2∗ , M. Cárdenas-Soto1 , C. Ortiz-Alemán2 ,
C. Couder-Castañeda3 , J. Urrutia-Fucugauchi4 and A. Trujillo-Alcántara2
1 Facultad de Ingenierı́a, UNAM, Av. Universidad No. 3000, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, C. U., Coyoacán, C.P. 04510, D.F.,
México, 2 Instituto Mexicano del Petróleo, Eje Central Lázaro Cárdenas 152, México DF, 07730, México, 3 Centro de Desarrollo
Aeroespacial, Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Belisario Domı́nguez No. 22, México, D.F., México, and 4 Programa de Perforaciones en
Océanos y Continentes, Instituto de Geofı́sica, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México D.F., 04510, México

Received January 2015, revision accepted January 2016

ABSTRACT
We present a novel approach to automated volume extraction in seismic data and
apply it to the detection of allochthonous salt bodies. Using a genetic algorithm,
we determine the optimal size of volume elements that statistically, according to the
U-test, best characterize the contrast between the textures inside and outside of the salt
bodies through a principal component analysis approach. This information was used
to implement a seeded region growing algorithm to directly extract the bodies from
the cube of seismic amplitudes. We present the resulting three-dimensional bodies
and compare our final results to those of an interpreter, showing encouraging results.

Key words: Salt bodies, Genetic algorithms, Principal component analysis, Seismic
textures, Statistical tests, Seeded-based region growing, seismic textures.

1 INTRODUCTION of complex images. Distinct automated and semi-automated

methods have been proposed following this approach of fea-
Analysis of 3D seismic data has traditionally been done by em-
ture extraction of seismic patterns and subsequent segmen-
pirical interpretation of 2D profiles; a task commonly consid-
tation on seismic data. The majority of these methods are
ered tedious and time-consuming. These inconveniences lead
designed for 2D data. Ng, Kittler, and Illingworth (1993) pro-
to the interpretation of just some of the sections of the whole
posed an approach using bandpass filters to extract features
seismic cube; however, this approach implies loss of expen-
for a trained segmentation algorithm, but the necessary train-
sive and valuable information to create a comprehensive geo-
ing steps make it very complex for 3D data. Love and Simaan
logic model of the subsurface. As the volume and resolution
(1985) proposed a supervised template matching approach for
of seismic data increase, the ability to automate interpreta-
texture classification. The segmentation was performed by a
tion is becoming more attractive to enhance the productivity
rule-based algorithm and was tested on a single 2D seismic
of geoscientists and to minimize the subjectivity of the pro-
section. Some 3D-capable applications have been proposed
cess (Dumay and Fournier 1988; Jacquemin and Mallet 2005;
as well. Shen et al. (1998) developed a hierarchical region-
Cohen, Coult, and Vassiliou 2006; Orozco-del-Castillo et al.
clustering technique and applied it to 3D variance-filtered
2011b).
seismic data in an unsupervised way. Köster and Spann (1999)
Seismic interpretation involves feature discrimination of
described an unsupervised method to extract 2D and 3D in-
certain seismic patterns as a means to achieve image segmen-
ner earth structures using region growing for segmentation.
tation, a process that relies heavily on the human visualization
Although unsupervised, their algorithm was dependent on the
design of a filter bank to cover the frequency bands of the
∗ E-mail: maorca42@gmail.com expected signal.


C 2016 European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers 1
2 M.G. Orozco-del-Castillo et al.
Several works trying to extract features in seismic data
have focused on textural analysis. For instance, Gao (2003,
2004) presented a volume extraction method based on the tex-
ture element (texel) concept to visualize structural and strati-
graphic features. Simaan (1991) proposed a knowledge-based
expert system to segment a seismic section based on its texture.
West et al. (2002) captured textural analysis from segments
of seismic data with a characteristic reflection pattern con-
trasting from those of other areas to create 3D seismic facies
maps; their method employed a neural network to associate
seismic data to some predefined classes. A similar approach
was followed by Zeng (2004), who successfully classified seis-
mic geomorphology-based facies to create 3D maps.
Seismic depth imaging in areas with salt tectonics is a very
difficult task due to the progressive lack of resolution beneath
the presence of salt bodies. Since oil exploration targets may
be located close or below salt bodies, in recent years, there has
been a growing interest in computational tools that can help
seismic interpreters estimate geometry, position, and depth
distribution of diapirs from volume data (Gao 2003; Orozco-
del-Castillo et al. 2011a; Berthelot et al. 2011). Traditional
seismic processing and interpretation can usually provide an
appropriate location of the top of salt bodies, but the esti-
mation of the geometry distribution of salt, particularly the
base of salt domes, is often a challenging task. One automatic
approach (Lomask, Clapp, and Biondi 2007) to segmentation
of salt structures focused on using the instantaneous ampli-
tude as an attribute to achieve automatic segmentation. This
method proved useful to delineate the top of the salt struc-
tures, which is characterized by a strong reflector; however,
delineation of the base of salt remains a challenging task be-
cause it does not present such a well-defined boundary. A
recent semi-automatic approach for salt detection (Berthelot
et al. 2011) consisted of extracting selected texture attributes
to train a classifier and estimate the probability that each pixel
belongs to a set of previously defined classes. They conclude
that the boundaries of a salt structure are often character-
ized by textural changes rather than reflectivity ones. While a
good correspondence between the semi-automatic segmenta-
tion and the interpretation of an experienced interpreter was
found, it is acknowledged that the differences were likely due
in part to the interpreter having access to the full 3D vol-
ume, as opposed to the 2D nature of the texture attributes
used to train the classifier, which makes 3D automatic and
semi-automatic techniques for salt detection desirable.
A successful approach to qualitatively recognize patterns
was proposed by Turk and Pentland (1991). Following a prin-
cipal component analysis (PCA) approach, they developed

C 2016 European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers, Geophysical Prospecting, 1–9
a system to detect faces and then recognize a person by
comparing characteristics of the face (abstract characteristics
instead of face features such as nose, mouth, etc.) to those of
known individuals. By proposing the qualitative concept of
“eigenfaces,” their system emulated the way humans actually
recognize faces and proved to be more effective than several
quantitative methodologies. Similar approaches have already
been successful in earth sciences (Dumay and Fournier 1988),
including detection of salt bodies in seismic profiles (Orozco-
del-Castillo et al. 2011a).
Genetic algorithms (GAs), a term that comprises a set
of computational objects and procedures that emulate the
process of natural evolution, constitute a class of methods
to solve highly non-linear optimization problems. GAs have
been successfully used in earth sciences. Some of the applica-
tions include filter design for image enhancement (Orozco-
del-Castillo et al. 2013), salt body retrieval (Krahenbuhl
and Li 2009), and shallow elastic parameters determination
(Rodrı́guez-Zúñiga et al. 1997).
In this paper we present a novel methodology to esti-
mate the geometry and to extract bodies from seismic data,
and apply it to a particular case of salt tectonics. We propose
that the texture of the elements inside the salt bodies is dif-
ferent from that surrounding them; therefore, it is possible to
approximately detect and isolate the bodies by propagating
a seed from within the salt using a seed-based region grow-
ing algorithm. By applying PCA with 3D arrays (in the form
of cubes) of elements contained within the salt bodies, we
capture their texture characteristics and contrast them with
elements surrounding the bodies. Using GAs as an optimiza-
tion technique, we determine the optimal number of training
data sets and the size of the cube of elements which statisti-
cally (according to the Mann-Whitney U-test) better capture
the texture of salt. As opposed to other methodologies, our
system was trained with 3D textural information as a mean to
provide it with more information than is available to human
interpreters to judge texture through visual inspection of seis-
mic images. We briefly present the theoretical basis for this
work; then detail how the different tools were used to capture
the texture differences between the inside and outside of the
salt bodies, showing and comparing our results to those of
an experienced interpreter; and finally, discuss them and offer
some concluding remarks.
2 THEORY
In this section, we summarize several theoretical concepts
and tools that are later used in this paper. These concepts

include principal component analysis (PCA), genetic algo-
rithms (GAs_, and the Mann–Whitney U-test.
2.1 Principal component analysis and eigenspaces
The method of PCA, as implemented by Turk and Pentland,
consists of finding the principal components of the distribu-
tion of the patterns to be recognized (faces, in their case). In
mathematical terms, the method consists initially of obtain-
ing the eigenvectors of the covariance matrix of a training
set of patterns. When images (2D) are used, they should be
converted to very large vectors (1D) by rearrangement of the
rows of each image. As shown by Turk and Pentland, this
conversion does not imply any loss of relational information
since reconstructed images maintain the same general struc-
ture as the original ones. The assumption is that vectors (or
points) representing the same pattern exist close to each other
in a very high dimensional space, and apart from other vec-
tors that do not. The eigenvectors are ordered according to
their respective eigenvalues, a measure of the contribution of
each eigenvector to the principal components of the set of im-
ages. Each image in the training set (minus the average of all
the images,  in equation (1)) can be represented exactly in
terms of a linear combination of the eigenvectors. Each image
can also be approximated using only the “best” eigenvectors,
i.e., those with the largest associated eigenvalues. The best M
eigenvectors span an M-dimensional subspace,  in equation
(1), of all possible images. This space serves for detection pur-
poses because the Euclidean distance (norm) from a vector to
this space represents a measure of how closely it resembles
the pattern in the training set—the smaller the distance, the
higher the resemblance. The distance is calculated as:
D = (v̄ − ) −  , (1)
where v̄ represents a vector to be tested against the space,
 the average vector of the training set, and  the defined
space. A more detailed explanation is described by Turk and
Pentland (1991).
2.2 Genetic algorithms
Initially proposed by Holland (1975), GAs represent a means
to emulate the process of natural evolution, based on the sur-
vival of the fittest and the improvement of new individuals
through sexual reproduction. First, an initial population that
is ideally uniformly distributed across the search space is gen-
erated at random. Each individual of the initial population is
represented as a set of elements. The individual is also called

C 2016 European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers, Geophysical Prospecting, 1–9
Texture-based region growing algorithm 3
chromosome, and its elements are referred to as genes or
alleles due to its biologic analogy. All of the individuals in
the initial population are evaluated with a given cost func-
tion to preserve those that are better adapted, the rest are
discarded. Those remaining organisms yield a new generation
after pairing and reproduction through a crossover operation.
Mutation is randomly applied to a small percentage of this
new generation so different areas of the search space (not
available through the crossover operation) can be explored,
and local minima avoided. The new generation is evaluated
again to allow only the fittest individuals to survive, and the
process repeats itself until a predefined threshold is achieved
or when a certain number of iterations (generations) is
reached.
2.3 The mann–whitney U-test
When two or more groups of data need to be compared, a
statistical test is often needed. A frequently used test in statis-
tics to measure the difference between the central tendencies
of two given sets is the Mann–Whitney U-test (also called the
Mann–Whitney–Wilcoxon, Wilcoxon rank-sum test, or sim-
ply U-test) (Mann and Whitney 1947). The U-test is appro-
priate for samples that do not exhibit a normal distribution
and that present distinct and large sizes. The U-test initially
consists of combining all of the sample values of two data
sets from low to high ordering, assigning ranks to the values
(1 for the lowest, 2 for the next, and so on) and finding the
sum of the ranks for each sample. In the case of tied values,
a rank equal to the midpoint of unadjusted rankings is as-
signed. For example, assuming two data sets A = (15, 10, 5)
and B = (25, 9, 15), the sample values are combined and
ordered as (5, 9, 10, 15, 15, 25), and the ranks are assigned
as (1, 2, 3, 4.5, 4.5, 6). The sum of the ranks of the elements
corresponding to set A would be calculated as 4.5+3+1 =
8.5, whereas the sum of the ranks of the elements of set B as
6+2+4.5 = 12.5; these two values are used to calculate the
U statistic. Basically, when comparing two data sets, the U
statistic corresponds to the number of times an element of a
given set is larger than the elements of the other set; therefore,
the maximum value of U is the product of the sample sizes
for the two samples, whereas the minimum value is 0. Given
two data sets, A and B, the sums of the ranks are denoted as
RA and RB , and the sample sizes as NA and NB . To contrast
the difference between the sums of the ranks, the statistic U is
used as:
NA(NA + 1)
U = NA NB + − RA, (2)
2
4 M.G. Orozco-del-Castillo et al.
corresponding to the set A. The statistic U is the number of
times that the values of the set A precede those of set B when
all of the values are ordered in ascending order. The sampling
distribution U is symmetric and has a mean and variance given
by:
NA NB NA NB (NA + NB + 1)
μU = and σU2 = , (3,4)
2 12
respectively. Then, the distribution of U is approximately nor-
mal such that
U − μU
z= (5)
σU
is normally distributed with mean 0 and variance 1. The result
of this test, the z statistic, represents a measure of how large
the contrast between the central tendencies of two sets is; the
greater the value of z, the greater difference exists between
the sets. The U-test has successfully been employed to mea-
sure contrast of central tendencies in seismic data for semi-
automatic interpretation of salt bodies (Orozco-del-Castillo
et al. 2013). In the context of seismic textures, the U-test al-
lows us to not only interpret the salt bodies themselves as
structures with defined geometries but also as the information
within the bodies, which is usually harder for the interpreter
to describe and recognize.
3 METHOD
As stated by Gao (2003), it is difficult and time-consuming
to define the 3D geometry of a salt body directly from the
amplitude volume because samples within the salt are similar
to and connected with those in the surrounding areas. Because
of this, we propose there is a pattern, a texture, inside the
salt bodies, which can be captured by a group of samples,
as opposed to individual values of amplitude. To extract this
pattern, we used a principal component analysis (PCA)-based
approach.
To capture the characteristics of the elements within the
salt body, and to contrast them with those on the surrounding
areas, we selected samples according to an expert’s interpre-
tation of different seismic sections; one of them is shown in
Fig. 1(a). The salt body, as interpreted, is highlighted by the
white line in Fig. 1(b). Samples were randomly chosen from
both the inside (magenta pixels) and outside (darkened pix-
els) of the salt body to be separately subject to PCA. In other
words, samples chosen from the inside of the salt body are
intended to be used as the training set for one space, whereas
those from the outside as the training set for another. To avoid
inserting uncertainty to the system, the area highlighted in red

C 2016 European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers, Geophysical Prospecting, 1–9
is not used for training. Nevertheless, since individual val-
ues cannot represent the concept of texture, it is necessary to
select groups of them instead, which we extracted as small
cubes around the chosen samples. The optimal size of the
cubes (the number of elements of each side) had to be deter-
mined. To solve this issue, we decided to use a genetic algo-
rithm (GA) as an optimization tool to find the size of the cubes
and the number of them to use as training sets for the PCA,
which would best capture the texture differences between the
inside and the outside of the salt bodies. To measure the differ-
ences of texture, we used a statistical test, the U-test, to serve
as the cost function for the GA. In other words, the objective
is to find the parameters (size of cube and number of cubes
to be used for training) that would maximize the z statistic, a
representation of contrast between the sets of values inside the
salt bodies from those on the outside. This operation, the cost
function for a given cube size and given number of samples,
is explained as follows.
First, each one of the cubes (3D) was transformed into
a vector (1D) by the rearrangement of the rows so that they
could be subject to PCA; this process is illustrated in Fig. 2.
From here on, the term “cube” is used as an equivalent of
“vectorized representation of a cube” for simplicity purposes.
The cubes selected from the inside and the outside of the bod-
ies were used separately to determine two different spaces,
I and O , in the same sense as  in equation (1). The
distance from each one of the cubes (represented by v̄ in the
same equation), both those from the inside and the outside of
the salt bodies, was measured to both spaces I and O ac-
cording to equation (1) and stored into sets. Thus, this process
yielded four different sets of distances, corresponding to:
1. DII : distances from the cubes inside the salt bodies to the
space I ;
2. DIO : distances from the cubes inside the salt bodies to the
space O ;
3. DOI : distances from the cubes outside the salt bodies to the
space I ;
4. DOO : distances from the cubes outside the salt bodies to
the space O .
The sets DII and DIO were used separately from the sets DOI
and DOO , and subject to the U-test. These two pairs of sets
were used as A and B, respectively, in the process described by
equations (2–5). In other words, we compared how different
the sets DII and DIO were from each other, and separately the
sets DOI and DOO . It is to be expected that the distances in DII
and DOO should be considerably smaller than the distances in
DIO and DOI , respectively, since the first ones represent the
distance from the elements to their respective spaces, whereas
 Texture-based region growing algorithm 5

Figure 1 (a) A seismic profile of the seismic volume showing salt diapirs and (b) its interpretation by an expert. The salt bodies, as interpreted,
are delimited by the white line. Data assumed as salt used for training is highlighted in magenta, data assumed as no salt is darkened, and data
highlighted in red is not used for training. Time interval t = 0.01s. space interval x = 10m (1260 traces). 670 samples per trace.

the latter from the elements to a different space. This resulted
in two different z statistics, zI and zO . The minimum of these
values was used as the value of z, the output of the cost func-
tion used in the GA for a given set of parameters to be opti-
mized. Choosing the minimum value avoids having a system
that correctly identifies salt information as salt (for instance)
but incorrectly identifies other patterns as salt as well.
The GA was used to find the optimal parameters cor-
responding to the size of the cube and the number of train-
ing samples to define the spaces using PCA, both for the in-
side and for the outside of the salt bodies. We implemented
a real-valued GA whose structure follows that of a typical
GA. The fitness of each set of parameters was determined by
its z statistic, which was obtained as described in the previ-
ous paragraph. The characteristics used for the GA were de-
fined as follows: An initial population of 32 individuals was
generated after selecting the best individual of 32 respective
instances of the GA. This initial population was used again
in an instance of the GA, subject to 50 generations, weighted
random pairing as the technique for parent selection (better
suited individuals have a higher probability to reproduce) and
a 5% mutation rate. The crossover operation was defined as


C 2016 European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers, Geophysical Prospecting, 1–9
6 M.G. Orozco-del-Castillo et al.

Figure 2 The amplitude values surrounding each sample (red element) are grouped into a cube, which is transformed into a high-dimensional
(42,875) vector for PCA.

Figure 3 The final salt bodies resulting from the region growing algorithm, superimposed to the seismic cube and the seismic section shown in
Fig. 1(a).

the arithmetic mean with a random weighting factor chosen
before each crossover operation. For two parents selected
for reproduction, only some of their parameters were com-
bined, and the others were passed on to the next generation
unchanged; this was implemented randomly during each oper-
ation. Twins were discarded during the optimization process.
Due to the computational cost of the optimization process
(evolution of the GA, PCA –which involves matrix manipula-
tion and the calculation of eigenvectors– and the computation
of the z statistic), a parallel approached was required. The
parallel implementation is described, and the results presented
and discussed in the following section.


C 2016 European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers, Geophysical Prospecting, 1–9
 Texture-based region growing algorithm 7

Figure 4 A comparison between the automated methodology and that from an interpreter on four different and sequential seismic sections.
The red lines show the original interpretations, whereas the magenta areas correspond to the results of the automated methodology. Notice the
similitude and discrepancies on both interpretations, particularly the section of the salt body at the right of the seismic section in (c), unnoticed
on the original interpretation but accurately corresponds to a salt body.

4 RESULTS volume element (or voxel), the six-connected neighbors, one

for each face of the voxel, are examined, but instead of
The optimal parameters according to the genetic algorithm
analysing the value of each neighbor, for each one of them,
(GA) consisted of cubes of 35 elements on each side, i.e.,
a cube of 35 values in each direction is calculated, with the
42,875 elements total (353 = 42,875), 7,285 samples on the
given neighbor as its centre. This cube is then transformed to
outside of the salt bodies and 4,134 inside them. Using these
a 42,875-element vector (as aforementioned and illustrated in
parameters two different spaces, I and O , were defined
Fig. 2), and subject to PCA as v̄ in equation (1). The distances
through principal component analysis (PCA). After this, we
from the vector to the spaces I and O are calculated acc-
applied a 3D seed-based region growing algorithm (SBRG)
ording to equation (1) (with their respective values of  I and
parting from one known seed to propagate throughout the
 O ), and labelled as DI and DO . If DI < DO , the neighbor
whole salt body. SBRG, first proposed by Adams (1994), is
is considered part of the salt body and is therefore added to
a well-known algorithm in digital image processing, and has
the region. After each iteration every six-connected neighbor
successfully been used as an image segmentation technique in
(except for those already considered salt) of every new voxel
several research fields for both 2D and 3D data. Starting from
considered part of the salt body is evaluated and added to the
a manually chosen seed as the initial location, the algorithm
region if appropriate. This process continues until no more six-
consists of examining neighboring locations and determining
connected voxels are considered salt. The results are shown
if they should be added to the region if a certain criterion is
in Fig. 3(a, b), where the resulting 3D salt bodies are super-
met. The process is iterated on until no more locations can
imposed to the seismic information.
be added to the region. Since we employ the actual data from
Since there is no well information in the area, it is not
the seismic volume, 3D region growing was necessary.
possible to evaluate the results as an exactly accurate represen-
The modification of this algorithm consisted of how the
tation of the actual salt body; however, comparisons between
criterion for adding new locations was evaluated. For each
expert interpretations of different seismic profiles across the


C 2016 European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers, Geophysical Prospecting, 1–9
8 M.G. Orozco-del-Castillo et al.
seismic cube with the extracted salt body present encouraging
resemblances (Fig. 4). Further, some discrepancies have led to
a reevaluation of certain areas where the salt body may have
been incorrectly misinterpreted. Notice the salt body on the
right side of the seismic section in Fig. 4(c), which was miss-
ing in the original interpretation (Fig. 1b). We believe these
differences may be used to feedback both the manual and
automatic interpretation to create a more consistent and reli-
able system.
In terms of performance, a parallel version was devel-
oped for the more computationally intensive method, i.e., the
search algorithm. The GA takes around 10 hours to converge
on a standard personal computer because of the stochastic
nature of the algorithm, i.e., different runs lead to different
results. Regarding the search algorithm, a trivial paralleliza-
tion would consist of evaluating every voxel within the cube
and determine if it is considered salt, but this implies a prob-
lem of complexity O(x × y × z), i.e., the number of inlines,
crosslines, and samples per trace, which is a waste of re-
sources because the area that contains the salt is a closed
subdomain of the seismic cube. This approach would also
incorporate unnecessary uncertainty to the final model since
salt voxels tend to be adjacent to each other. A more effi-
cient parallelization consists of spawning the growing of the
voxels among the multiple threads of processing, reducing
considerably the number of voxels analysed. Nevertheless, to
ensure that the threads work on different voxels, a mutual
exclusion implemented through locks is necessary. The search
algorithm was implemented in FORTRAN 2003 specification
with OpenMP directives, and the mutual exclusion was estab-
lished by omp_locks. The algorithm was tested on a symmetric
multiprocessor system (SMP) with four sockets and ten cores
per socket, giving a total of 40 cores with the hyper-threading
technology disabled. The employed data set was composed
of 327 inlines, 902 crosslines, and 2,501 samples per trace,
which implies a total of 737,679,954 voxels. The parallelized
implementation of the search algorithm takes between 72 and
96 hours to find all of the voxels belonging to salt bodies,
depending on the parameters yielded by the GA.
5 CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we have presented an approach to semi-
automatically extract volumes from 3D seismic data and
tested it to extract a salt body. This approach consists of
determining the size of small-volume elements of cubic form,
which better capture the texture inside the volumes. As well
as the size, the optimal number of these elements was also

C 2016 European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers, Geophysical Prospecting, 1–9
determined using a multi-component system: a genetic algo-
rithm as an optimization tool with a cost function based on
principal component analysis (PCA) and the Mann–Whitney
U-test. Using this approach, we determined that cubes of
35 elements per side (42,875 total elements) are able to dis-
criminate the pattern or texture of the inside of the salt body
from the texture of the outside. This information served to
feed a modified version of the traditional seed-based region
growing (SBRG) algorithm to extract the salt body from the
seismic volume, i.e., a PCA-based 3D SBRG algorithm, which
is also presented in this paper. This algorithm was used to
grow the salt body parting from an initial point (the seed),
capturing cubes as it grows and measuring the distance from
them to two previously defined spaces (referring to the char-
acteristics of the elements from the inside and outside of the
salt body, respectively) in a PCA-based fashion. This process
repeats itself until no more elements are added to the region.
The final extracted salt body was compared against the sug-
gestion of an experienced interpreter across different seismic
sections, obtaining a good correspondence. While there is no
certainty as to whether the extracted salt body is completely
accurate due to the lack of well information, we found the re-
sults consistent with the geological model of the site. We also
believe discrepancies between the automatically extracted salt
body and the interpretations from the expert could feedback
each other in order to achieve more consistent estimations.
These encouraging results lead us to believe this approach
could prove useful for detection and extraction of similar ge-
ologic structures, not just salt bodies.
While a parallel version of the code was implemented as
described in the previous section, a more sophisticated and ef-
ficient implementation could be necessary to incorporate this
methodology as a resourceful tool in seismic interpretation.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors want to acknowledge the support provided
by DGAPA-UNAM and projects IMP/D.00475, H.61006,
Y.00107 and SENER-Conacyt 128376. We also want to
thank the anonymous reviewers and editor Giuliana Rossi
for their critical reading and valuable suggestions that greatly
improve the quality of this work.
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