Edge-preserving enhancement of seismic images by nonlinear anisotropic diffusion

rocessing a seismic image comprising the steps of(a) obtaining a two or three dimensional initial image data set, wherein each element u(m=0) of the data set is the initial image intensity of a point of the image;(b) calculating for each point the partial derivatives of u(m) in n directions to obtain n derivative data sets of the partial derivatives uxi; (c) calculating for each point a symmetric nxn structural matrix S, wherein the elements spq equal uxp.uxq, and an nxn diffusion matrix D, wherein the elements dij are a function of the elements spq; (d) calculating for each point u(m+1) from u(m) using the following equation u(m+1)=u(m)+c.div(epsil.Dgrad(u(m))), wherein c is a predetermined constant, 0