AccScience Publishing / JSE / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/JSE026270125
ARTICLE

Pre-stack seismic lithology prediction constrained by multi-scale structural similarity and logarithmic opinion pool fusion

Qixin Li1,2 Bo Wang3 Lijun Mi1 Haizhang Yang1 Bin Jiang1 Sanyi Yuan2*
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1 Department of Digitalization and Intelligence, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) Research Institute Ltd., Beijing, China
2 State Key Laboratory of Petroleum Resources and Engineering, China University of Petroleum, Beijing, China
3 Department of Exploration and Development, China United Coalbed Methane Corp., Ltd., Beijing, China
Received: 3 July 2026 | Revised: 21 July 2026 | Accepted: 22 July 2026 | Published online: 18 August 2026
© 2026 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
Abstract

Lithology prediction from pre-stack seismic inversion is a key step in reservoir characterization. Bayesian classification provides a common way to transform inversion-derived elastic parameters into lithology probabilities. However, conventional point-wise Bayesian classification assumes independent seismic samples and ignores the spatial structure of lithological assemblages. This often leads to salt-and-pepper noise, fragmented lithological distributions, and poor lateral continuity. To overcome these limitations, we propose an improved Bayesian lithology prediction method that combines rock-physics constraints with spatial constraints from lithological assemblages. First, Bayesian classification probabilities were constructed through rock-physics analysis based on the elastic parameters derived from pre-stack inversion. Second, multi-scale structural similarity was used to measure the structural similarity between inverted elastic parameter traces and well logs at multiple scales. The similarity weights guide the propagation of well-based lithology sequences into a non-stationary lithology probability volume under the lithological assemblage constraints. Finally, a logarithmic opinion pool was used to fuse the Bayesian classification probabilities with the assemblage-constrained lithology probabilities. The logarithmic opinion pool fusion introduces weighting parameters to control the relative contributions of the Bayesian classification probabilities and the assemblage-constrained lithology probabilities. Theoretical analysis shows that this formulation is equivalent to generalized Bayesian inference with power likelihoods and power priors, allowing rock-physics evidence from inversion to be balanced with the lithological assemblage constraints derived from multi-scale structural similarity. Application to a field dataset from the northeastern Ordos Basin shows that the proposed method improves lithological continuity, reduces salt-and-pepper noise, and preserves local details. Blind-well validation indicates that the overall prediction accuracy increases from 71.1% for the conventional Bayesian method to 82.5% for the proposed method. These results suggest that the proposed framework provides an accurate and geologically consistent workflow for lithology prediction in complex reservoir settings.

Keywords
Bayesian classification
Lithology prediction
Logarithmic opinion pool
Multi-scale structural similarity
Pre-stack inversion
Funding
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant U24B2031 and the China University of Petroleum, Beijing, for research related to gas hydrate exploration (grant number: 41974140).
Conflict of interest
The authors declare no competing interests.
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Journal of Seismic Exploration, Print ISSN: 0963-0651, Published by AccScience Publishing