Systems and methods for generating synthetic fracture images of subsurface layers for drilling wells

A system, comprising:

• a drilling system configured to:
• drill a first wellbore in a subterranean region of interest according to a planned wellbore path;
• and
• receive at least one property for a first section of the first wellbore;
• a synthetic fracture image generator configured to generate on processing the at least one property, during drilling of the first wellbore, a synthetic wellbore fracture image for the first wellbore, wherein the synthetic fracture image generator has been generated by training a machine-learned network using a training set of wellbore images from a second wellbore in the subterranean region of interest, wherein the synthetic wellbore fracture image predicts a fracture in geological layers along the planned wellbore path;
• and
• a display system configured to display, during drilling of the first wellbore, the synthetic wellbore fracture image,
• wherein the drilling system is further configured to perform a drilling operation with respect to the first wellbore based on the synthetic wellbore fracture image.

A method, comprising:

• obtaining a plurality of wellbore images from a first wellbore in a subterranean region of interest;
• determining, using a trained first machine-learned network, a plurality of detected fracture traces using the plurality of wellbore images;
• determining, for each of the plurality of detected fracture traces, a set of fracture geostatistical properties;
• creating a database of fracture properties comprising the plurality of wellbore images, the plurality of detected fracture traces and the plurality of sets of geostatistical properties;
• and
• generating a synthetic fracture image generator by training a second machine-learned network, using the database of fracture properties, to produce a synthetic wellbore fracture image for a second wellbore in the subterranean region of interest during drilling of the second wellbore.