Interactive geological visualization based on quadratic-surface distance query

Abstract

Seismic data visualization and analysis can help the domain experts, e.g., geologists and oil or gas exploration experts, to explore the distribution of petroleum or gas. It assists them to get a better understanding of stratigraphic structures and the distribution of the geological materials, e.g., underground flow path (UFP) and the contexts of UFPs (river delta, floodplain, slump fan, oil well, etc.). UFPs are one of the significant stratigraphic structures according to the domain experts, because they are closely related to the distribution and the migration of oil or gas. We design a quadratic-surface distance query scheme to explore UFPs and their contexts within a local region. First, it just needs to share parameters of quadratic surfaces to the rendering modules instead of all volume data or all subvolume data to conduct distance queries, and it is flexible to perform multiple complex logic operations through the quadratic surface-based queries. Second, it enables one to perform domain-specific interactions after distance queries such as the flexible switching of multiple display modes. Third, it enables one to perform local transfer function on different subvolumes different query results or their arbitrary combinations. We have evaluated the approach by comparing them with existing methods by performance evaluation and result evaluation. Results show that the proposed approach is capable of performing complex distance queries and fulfilling the domain-specific interactions getting better results and timing performance.