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Sobel edge detection and its application in LMD-based seismic fault detection
KAI BAI1 ,
HUIQUN XU2,3 ,
XIAOYU SHE3
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1
School of Computer Science, Yangtze University, Jingzhou 434023, Hubei, P.R. China.,
2
Working Station for Postdoctoral Scientific Research, PetroChina Dagang Oilfield Company, Tianjin 300280, P.R. China.,
3
School of Geophysics and Oil Resources, Yangtze University, Wuhan 430100, Hubei, P.R. China.,
JSE 2018, 27(6), 531–542;
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
Bai, K., Xu, H.Q. and She, X.Y., 2018. Sobel edge detection and its application in LMD-based seismic fault detection. Journal of Seismic Exploration, 27: 531-542. This paper aims to find a comprehensive method for detecting edges amidst background and noise. To this end, the local mean decomposition (LMD) filter and coherence algorithm were combined into a new seismic fault detection method. The priori knowledge on the edge location was calculated by the coherence cube, and the artificial edges were eliminated by the LMD filter. Then, the Sobel algorithm was adopted to obtain the greyscales based on the coherence, and derive the seismic edges. Through comparison, it is learned that the seismic edges obtained by our method coincide with the seismic faults in the original seismic data. Therefore, the proposed method can visualize seismic faults and accelerate the interpretation process. The research findings shed new light on the edge detection in relevant fields.
Keywords
local mean decomposition (LMD)
Sobel
edge detection
seismic fault detection
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