Seismic images exhibit considerable local continuity. With the exception of unusual amplitude anomalies and faults, most seismic events can be characterized as exhibiting smoothly varying local dip. Bahorich and Farmer 1995 and Gersztenkorn and Marfurt 1996 show that deviations from local planar behavior can be crucial in unraveling complex fault patterns, improving interpretations, and delineating reservoir extent.
As solutions to least squares optimization problems, local dip estimates are functions of the local spatial and temporal derivatives of the 3-D seismic wavefield. Because differentiation is a natural edge detector, unusual events in 3-D volumes frequently result in anomalous estimates of local slowness. This article shows that the magnitude of local dip estimates is an excellent detector of interesting events in 3-D seismic volumes.