Fuzzy subfiber and its application to seismic lithology classification

Rosenfeld proposed the concept of the 2D fuzzy subset and successfully applied it to the problem of image segmentation. However, the 2D fuzzy subset approach could be used only for gray scale image segmentation because it fails to handle higher-dimensional range images such as color images. To deal with higher-dimensional range images, we introduce a new concept—fuzzy subfiber—which can be viewed as an extension of the 2D fuzzy subset. In this paper, we give the definition of fuzzy subfiber and discuss one of its most important properties: connectivity on fuzzy subfibers. This property enables us to develop fast image segmentation algorithms for higher-dimensional range images. Finally, we discuss lithology determination (classification) as a real application of fuzzy subfiber.