Enhancement of depth estimation techniques with amplitude analysis

Depth estimation has been used widely as a tool for rapid interpretion of large-scale potential-field data in applications such as mapping basement relief. Nearly all of these techniques rely on the analysis of the local shape of the anomalous field in determining the depth and location of the subsurface sources. These methods focus on the phase information at the expense of the amplitude of the data. Consequently, these methods often produce a large number of solutions and interpretation of the result is difficult. We develop a method for enhancing these techniques by incorporating amplitude information back into the depth estimation process. The method statistically identifies significant source solutions from the estimation based on their relative source strengths, and discards false solutions due to noise and spray effects. The result is a subset of solutions that is more amenable for direct interpretation. We illustrate this new approach by applying it to the solution of the Euler and extended Euler deconvolutions. We demonstrate the improvement using magnetic data from the Bishop model, and present a field dataset from petroleum exploration.