Leveraging spatial metadata in machine learning for improved objective quantification of geological drill core

Abstract

Here we present a method for using the spatial x–y coordinate of an image cropped from the cylindrical surface of digital 3D drill core images and demonstrate how this spatial metadata can be used to improve unsupervised machine learning performance. This approach is applicable to any data set with known spatial context, however, here it is used to classify 400 m of drillcore imagery into 12 distinct classes reflecting the dominant rock types and alteration features in the core. We modified two unsupervised learning models to incorporate spatial metadata and an average improvement of 25% was achieved over equivalent models that did not utilize metadata. Our semi-supervised workflow involves unsupervised network training followed by semi-supervised clustering where a support vector machine uses a subset of M expert labeled images to assign a pseudolabel to the entire data set. Fine-tuning of the best performing model showed an f ₁ (macro average) of 90%, and its classifications were used to estimate bulk fresh and altered rock abundance downhole. Validation against the same information gathered manually by experts when the core was recovered during the Oman Drilling Project revealed that our automatically generated data sets have a significant positive correlation (Pearson's r of 0.65–0.72) to the expert generated equivalent, demonstrating that valuable geological information can be generated automatically for 400 m of core with only ∼24 hr of domain expert effort.

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