ARTICLE

Calculation of the seismic imaging complexity of complex geological structures

GAOXIANG CHEN1 LI-YUN FU1 KAN FU CHEN2 WEIJIA SUN1 WEI WEI1 XIZHU GUAN1
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1 Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academic of Science, Beijing 100029, P.R. China.,
2 Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Communication, Planning. Design and Research, Zhejiang 310000, P.R. China.,
JSE 2017, 26(1), 81–104;
Submitted: 9 June 2025 | Revised: 9 June 2025 | Accepted: 9 June 2025 | Published: 9 June 2025
© 2025 by the Authors. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
Abstract

Chen, G., Fu, L.-Y., Chen, K.F., Sun, W., Wei, W. and Guan, X., 2017. Calculation of the seismic imaging complexity of complex geological structures. Journal of Seismic Exploration, 26: 81-104. Quantitative analysis of geological complexity in terms of seismic imaging is an important way to measure the coherent interaction of geological heterogeneity spectra with the migrator used. Based on previous studies, we introduce several new strategies to evaluate the complexity of subsurface heterogeneous media, the main features of which are use of a velocity co-occurrence matrix for velocity variations and use of the Hough transform for dip-angle calculations. First, the velocity co-occurrence matrix is created by statistically classifying adjacent-point velocity contrasts, after which the scaling characteristics of migrators are directly incorporated into the matrix for presenting seismic imaging complexity. Second, vertical velocity variations are also taken into account using a depth-velocity co-occurrence matrix. Third, we apply the high-precision Hough transform to locate geological interfaces and estimate the dip angle of each point before calculating angular complexity. Finally, considering the indivisibility of the effect of both lateral/vertical velocity variations and dip angles, we define a comprehensive coefficient to assess the seismic imaging complexity of complex geological structures. Tests on the 2D SEG slat model and field data demonstrate that the new strategies proposed for evaluating geological complexity are reliable and applicable to different degrees of geological complexity due to the sensitivity of the method for detecting small and large velocity contrasts as well as dip-angle variations.

Keywords
velocity co-occurrence matrix
Hough transform
geological complexity
relative error function
seismic imaging
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Journal of Seismic Exploration, Electronic ISSN: 0963-0651 Print ISSN: 0963-0651, Published by AccScience Publishing