Patent ID: 7844402

Claim:
A method for identifying a fault patch from a seismic data volume representing underground earth structures, the method comprising: in a computing system and executed using a fault identification module: defining an initial active surface, the initial active surface including control points each in an initial position in the seismic data volume; measuring an accumulated energy of a plurality of the control points in the active surface for each of a plurality of different combinations of candidate positions, each combination of the plurality of different combinations comprising, for at least one control point, a candidate position different from the initial position and at least two combinations of the plurality of different combinations comprising, for each of at least two of the same control points, respective candidate positions different from the candidate position of the same control point in the other of the at least two combinations and different from the initial position of the same control point; and producing the fault patch formed by the plurality of control points in the combination of candidate positions for which a minimum accumulated energy is measured.