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 u xi ; (c) calculating for each point a symmetric n×n structural matrix S, wherein the elements s pq equal u xp ·u xq , and an n×n diffusion matrix D, wherein the elements d ij are a function of the elements s pq ; (d) calculating for each point u(m+1) from u(m) using the following equation u(m+1)=u(m)+c.div( .Dgrad(u(m))), wherein c is a predetermined constant, 0 c 1, and wherein is a scalar, 0 , wherein is close to zero when near an edge and close to 1 when far away from an edge ( 10, 11, 12, 14, 15 ); and(e) repeating steps (b) through (e) M times to obtain the processed image.