The ant-tracking method was introduced and algorithm organized by Randen et al. (2001). The ant attribute was developed based on the concept of ant colony systems to determine discontinuities such as faults in 3D seismic data. This attribute uses the principles of swarm intelligence, which explain the collective behavior of social insects in finding the shortest path between the nest and a food by communicating via a chemical substance known as Pheromone. When searching for foods ants uses these pheromone trails to direct other colony members to food they have found. Through this process the ants find the most efficient path from the nest to the food (Pedersen et al. 2002; Cox and Seitz, 2007). The shortest path is marked with more pheromones in the algorithm; ants are more likely to choose the shortest route, and so on.
In the ant attribute algorithm, large numbers of electronic ants are distributed in the seismic volume allowing them to move along faults and emitting pheromones. Surfaces that are strongly marked with pheromones are likely to be faults (Randen et al., 2001; Skov et al., 2003; Aguado et al., 2009; Khair et al, 2012).
