Application of edge detection to potential field data using eigenvalue analysis of structure tensor

One of the most important aims of potential field geophysicists is delineate the edges of subsurface structures. There are many methods based on horizontal and vertical derivative of potential field data for edge detection and enhancement. The structure tensor technique one of the image processing techniques is used to edge detection studies in many scientific areas. In this paper, the technique was applied to potential field data and detected edges of the subsurface lineaments using its eigenvalue analysis. Based on noise-free and noisy synthetic data sets, the technique was tested and satisfactory results were obtained. The proposed method was applied on two real potential field data which are gravity data of Konya region and magnetic data of Eastern Anatolia Region in Turkey. These examples demonstrate that the technique provides beneficial information to geoscientists for determining the horizontal location of subsurface structures such as contacts, faults or various source bodies.

► We applied the structure tensor technique to potential field data.
► The edge detection property of the technique was tested on synthetic data.
► The eigenvalue analyze of the structure tensor was made.
► We determined the subsurface lineaments by applying the technique on two real data.