Automatic boundary extraction from magnetic field data using triangular meshes

Abstract

Boundary extraction is a collective term that we use for the process of extracting the locations of faults, lineaments, and lateral boundaries between geologic units using geophysical observations, such as measurements of the magnetic field. The process typically begins with a preprocessing stage, where the data are transformed to enhance the visual clarity of pertinent features and hence improve the interpretability of the data. The majority of the existing methods are based on raster grid enhancement techniques, and the boundaries are extracted as a series of points or line segments. In contrast, we set out a methodology for boundary extraction from magnetic data, in which we represent the transformed data as a surface in 3D using a mesh of triangular facets. After initializing the mesh, we modify the node locations, such that the mesh smoothly represents the transformed data and that facet edges are aligned with features in the data that approximate the horizontal locations of subsurface boundaries. To illustrate our boundary extraction algorithm, we first apply it to a synthetic data set. We then apply it to identify boundaries in a magnetic data set from the McFaulds Lake area in Ontario, Canada. The extracted boundaries are in agreement with known boundaries and several of the regions that are completely enclosed by extracted boundaries coincide with regions of known mineralization.