Estimation of depth and location of anomalies resulting from ground electromagnetic data in the frequency domain by the depth from extreme points (DEXP) imaging method

Imaging methods have traditionally not used with EM fields because of a belief that EM fields obey the Maxwell’s wave equations rather than Laplace’s equation. However under some approximations, image methods could be applied on frequency domain EM data. We evaluated DEXP method to estimate location of subsurface targets. We tested the performance of the DEXP method on a synthetic dataset that was generated by the COMSOL multiphysics package for a horizontal cylinder, a vertical dike and a contact. The results show remarkable and accurate estimations of depths and horizontal locations of aforementioned models. This method was also tested on a real dataset and the results were compared with the one obtained from prior information.