Visualization Development Environments 2000 Proceedings 1 Petrophysical Core Analysis with X-ray and MRI Tomography: Visualization using

PV~Wave and Data Explorer Avrami Grader Pennsylvania State University R. P. (Bob) Kehl KehlCo, Inc. Abstract This paper presents software that was developed using PV~Wave and IBM Data Explorer for analyzing 2-D and 3-D tomographic images of oil well cores in support of petrophysical and reservoir analysis. Stacks of 2-D core slices are gathered into a 3-D volume and then the volume is analyzed by petrophysicists and reservoir engineers to determine whether the core has been disturbed, impacted or adulterated by the drilling process, fluid characteristics within the core, behavior of fluids when forced through the core and many other useful measurements such as density, porosity atomic numbers, and fluid saturations. Some of these measurements are used to calibrate numerical simulations of oil reservoirs. PV~Wave has been used to provide a widgetized graphical user interface (GUI) for slice input, special computations, filtering, graphing and display of the data. Computations are handled either by preprogrammed procedures or by direct control of a 3-D calculator metaphor. Data volumes are exported to Data Explorer tool for render and/or animation. This is useful for examining the morphological and topological features in the core such as vugs, mud invasion, heterogeneities, and in the case of flow experiments, fluid boundaries. 1. Introduction Core Imaging Tools Oil and oil service companies began using CT and MRI imaging technologies in the mid-1980s. The Oil industry uses X-ray Computerized Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to characterize rock samples (cores) taken from wells. The cores are placed in various thermodynamic environments and are imaged during fluid dynamics experiments. Three-dimensional imaging is used to characterize the cores and to study hydrocarbon displacement processes. As imaging methods have improved, both in acquisition times and resolution, large three-dimensional data sets become available and need to be analyzed and visualized. Some volumes may consist of 1000 x 1000 x 1000 points. The industry is interested not only in topological issues concerning the structure of the rock samples or fluid boundaries; but, it is also essential to quantify the three-dimensional distribution of properties such as density and effective atomic number. The emphasis is on quantitative analysis. Non-destructive testing of core samples is essential to the development of oil and gas resource. These cores may be extracted from great depths (even up to 4-5 miles) and are very expensive to obtain. Screening the sample using X-ray CT imaging provides the ability to select the best

parts of the sample for additional detailed characterization and fluid flow work. 2. Core Imaging Process / Data Flow The image data acquired from the scanner, usually in the form of one-slice-per-file with each file containing a header. The data then passes through a process of computation, analysis and display using VoxelCalc, a system based on PV~Wave. Three-dimensional volumes are written to a file for visualization using PetroPresents, a Data Explorer-based tool. If animations are needed, the data is written to MIFF files and converted via ImageMagick for display by a media player. Figure 1 summarizes the flow of data from the scanner to the analysis tools. Figure 1: Data flow path for the software PetroPresents Data Explorer VoxelCalc PV~Wave ImageMagick Media Player Scanner VDE 2000, Princeton, New Jersey, April 27-28, 2000 2 VoxelCalc, a software package for analyzing and processing images, was developed using PV~Wave widgets and the IMSL Math and Statistics Libraries. Figure 2: VoxelCalc main display and control panel. Figure 2 shows the main VoxelCalc display panel, a sequence of three-phase flow images, a color scale and distribution chart. The package employs a hand-held calculator metaphor for performing computations on multiple volumes and individual slices. Operands may be scalars, slices or volumes held in memory or files. Figure 3: Image/Volume Calculator control panel. The package also includes specific utilities for computing densities from dual energy X-ray CT images, effective atomic numbers, and special beam hardening image corrections. The data are exported from the PV~Wave based system to OpenDX (or AVS) networks for producing animations of core samples and fluid flow experiments. OpenDX was selected to provide the bulk of the 3-D rendering because of their rapid development and sophisticated interactive rendering capabilities. A coherent data interface design for passing data from PV~Wave to DX or AVS. Licensing, anti-piracy and code protection issues were addressed to deploy the system to multiple international users of PV~Wave-based products. 3. PV~Wave Components PV~Wave is an interactive fourth generation interpretive language which can also be compiled. It was used to build both the tomographic image analysis tool, VoxelCalc, and a well logging tool. 3.1. PV~Wave Features and Functions PV~Wave has many features and functions which sped the development process:

 Code can be generated by command line journalizing for recording code while executing it. Journalized code can become library procedures and functions. Powerful graphics commands. (See below) A library of widgets for many typical graphical functions Color editing, image display, isosurface and surface tools, plotting tool, strip chart tool, contouring tool, all of which can be invoked with one line of code. A library of math and statistics tools and a complete set of math operators in the syntax. File input-output covers ASCII text and binary files and includes a library of free and unformatted text routines. There are also output routines for the familiar image file formats gif, tif, jpeg, bmp, etc. Data structures which allow mixing data types. These can be used to describe binary file formats. Data type conversions are automatic. Lists which allow gathering of many data types and structures through concatenation. (This was especially helpful when reading files produced by many sources and having many different structures as in a well logging application.) Data can be piled up and referenced by indexes. Associative arrays which allow data elements to be given names and bundled together as a single variable. References to elements are by names or indexes. This is the means of storing common image types tiff, bmp, jpeg, etc. These features expedited and facilitated building a complete interactive system with PV~Wave. We drew Visualization Development Environments 2000 Proceedings 3 on a large complement of sample code which was customized to meet specific needs. The first version VoxelCalc was produced in about 4 months. It would have taken more than two person-years to do this with a common language and a graphics and math library. The well logging system was produced in 4.5 weeks effort of one person. A demonstration of the prototype to this oil companys IT department enabled them to call off a multi-person-year effort. The final product was finished within two more months and after two years, it is still in use as the benchmark for NMR logging software provided by service companies. 3.2 Image Display Power Images produced by CT or MRI are most often 16 bit signed integers and the commands to display a scaled images is quite simple and powerful: tvscl, image Or tv,bytscl(image, min, max) And for an array n 2-D images, for I = 0, n-1 do tvscl, images(*,*,I), I

A window is automatically created, if it does not exist. By using the powerful commands for graphics, borrowing and customizing samples of widget tools, VoxelCalc was introduced on Unix. When PV~Wave was ported to MS Windows, a four week effort ported the source code to Windows/95/98/NT. Most widgets and computations ported without change. Nearly all of the changes to the source code were made to accommodate the file and directory name/structure conventions and the machine format for integers, i.e., little endian integers for the Intel architecture. 4. Data Explorer Components Data Explorer(DX) is used to render volumes comprised of the CT or MRI slices. The VoxelCalc/PV~Wave system produces files which can be imported into DX. Several networks are set up to produce renderings and/or animations of the data. Figure 4 demonstrates a 3-D visualization of three-phase displacement combined with 2D reconstructions done with DX. Figure 5 shows a typical control panel. The geoscientist uses this to identify spatial features such as fluid interfaces, rock bedding planes, or vugs. The bedding plane orientations are important for extracting representative plugs from the cores. These plugs are used for further testing. Figure 6 shows a 3-D rendering of a core that was invaded by fluid during the extraction process. Figure 4: Fluid interface isosurface example Figure 5: User control panel example VDE 2000, Princeton, New Jersey, April 27-28, 2000 4 Figure 6: Depiction of corrupted core Data Explorer features that have been important in getting timely interactive 3-D visualization to our clients are: Visual Programming Editor (VPE) A rich collection of visual routines or tools accessible through the visual editor Widgets panels to control the parameters of visualization Portable between Unix and Windows platforms 5. Bugs, New Releases and Vendor Support Neither PV~Wave nor DX have ever compromised the functionality of the systems built on them. Further, the assistance through their help desks has always been responsive to questions and support has been immediate even when we called from such remote places as Indonesia or Saudi Arabia. In most countries, PV~Wave support has been available through a local dealer and VoxelCalc users have called on them for hands-on support. 6. Future Plans Additional features that are planned for the system are: Accommodation of larger data sets (higher resolution and at least two more dimensions.) Calculator macro function definitions and executions Direct application interface between PV~Wave and

DX components Utilization of DX SMP feature for some sites. 7. Well logging system based on PV~Wave PV~Wave was also used to produce an analysis and visualization tool for down-hole Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) logging tool, shown in Figure 7. Visualization Development Environments 2000 Proceedings 5 Figure 7: PV~Wave-based Well Logging System It provides scrollable depth logs on linear and log scales plus depth queued images indicated by the icons in the figure above. Clicking the mouse on an icon causes the associated image to pop up. 8. Summary/Conclusions PV~Wave and OpenDX get high marks in functionality, robustness, ease and speed of development, processing speed, portability and user support. Without such tools, it is likely that making products like these would be too costly for the derived benefit.