# Complete identification of complex salt geometries from inaccurate migrated subsurface offset gathers using deep learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.09710 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.09710/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 10 of its 47 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Apr 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Batch Normalization: Accelerating Deep Network Training by Reducing Internal Covariate Shift](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.03167/) (2015)
- [Fully Convolutional Networks for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.4038/) (2014)
- [SegNet: A Deep Convolutional Encoder-Decoder Architecture for Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.00561/) (2015)
- [3D U-Net: Learning Dense Volumetric Segmentation from Sparse Annotation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.06650/) (2016)
- [TensorFlow: Large-Scale Machine Learning on Heterogeneous Distributed Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.04467/) (2016)
- [Deep-learning inversion: a next generation seismic velocity-model building method](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.06267/) (2019)
- [Deep-Learning Inversion of Seismic Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.07733/) (2019)
- [Combining Fully Convolutional and Recurrent Neural Networks for 3D Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.01006/) (2016)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Delimiting salt inclusions from migrated images is a time-consuming activity that relies on highly human-curated analysis and is subject to interpretation errors or limitations of the methods available. We propose to use migrated images produced from an inaccurate velocity model (with a reasonable approximation of sediment velocity, but without salt inclusions) to predict the correct salt inclusions shape using a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). Our approach relies on subsurface Common Image Gathers to focus the sediments' reflections around the zero offset and to spread the energy of salt reflections over large offsets. Using synthetic data, we trained a U-Net to use common-offset subsurface images as input channels for the CNN and the correct salt-masks as network output. The network learned to predict the salt inclusions masks with high accuracy; moreover, it also performed well when applied to synthetic benchmark data sets that were not previously introduced. Our training process tuned the U-Net to successfully learn the shape of complex salt bodies from partially focused subsurface offset images.