Jeremy Lee is an Exploration Geologist at IGO Ltd, a company dedicated to helping find minerals crucial for the global transition to a clean energy future. But as a newcomer to the Fraser Range exploration team, he hit a daunting challenge… how to better manage core photo files and enable easier navigation.
Backed by his team, Jeremy championed the migration of 50,000 geological images from over 600 drill holes to Imago. Seequent’s cutting-edge, intuitive core image capture and storage technology provides swift, effortless photo access and has revolutionised the way the team manage their visual data.
As the world strives to transition to a cleaner energy future, a better understanding of the subsurface is crucial to help hit our big sustainability targets.
International net zero initiatives have set us on a path towards mass electrification with increased demand for battery minerals raising a supply challenge.
“We are exploring throughout Australia to target potential nickel, copper and lithium deposits,” says Jeremy Lee, IGO Exploration Geologist, based in Perth, Western Australia.
IGO supports future-facing technologies by developing and delivering products critical to clean energy and with a focus on discovering the mines of the future to help ensure a sustainable, global supply of clean energy metals.
“Without these metals, the world would shift to a shortage of supply and we’re looking to fill that gap,” says Jeremy.
Imago’s high-quality core image capture and storage technology has enabled Jeremy and the team to further explore crucial mineral opportunities on a key exploration project in the Fraser Range.
Together with 3D modelling, the innovative software brings a better understanding of the subsurface to support critical decision-making across drilling, mining and more.
IGO explores across Australia to target clean energy minerals such as nickel, copper and lithium (Image credit: IGO)
Looking to find important geological insights? The search is over.
Explorers are curious, driven by their search for new possibilities. Places people haven’t been before and figuring out how to get there.
Joining the Fraser Range exploration team in 2021, Jeremy was determined to tackle how to best manage their core photo files to ensure efficiency and easy navigation.
Alongside his day job of running exploration programs and planning, Jeremy championed the migration of IGO’s entire Fraser Range exploration project over to Imago.
The advanced platform streamlines the core logging process and saves time by capturing consistent, high-quality images of the drill hole core.
Jeremy had used the software in a previous role and understood the benefits of this innovative technology.
“Compared to a filing system of endless folders, it provides a much simpler, smoother and more efficient way of processing images,” says Jeremy.
Imago’s fast, intuitive, and easy-to-use interface allows more time for the tasks that matter.
“And you can continue to extract important insights from your images for crucial decision-making long after drilling is complete,” he adds.
Imago processes core imagery efficiently and auto labels, inspects, crops, and stores photos (Image credit: IGO)
High-quality geoscientific images. Instant access. Everyday convenience.
You can see for miles in any direction across the rocky, red landscape of the Fraser Range, southeast of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia.
“The project is one of the biggest in our exploration portfolio with an extensive range of existing and inherited data,” says Jeremy.
Recognising the significance of this venture Jeremy and the team made the strategic decision to migrate this important project over to Imago.
“It took some work to collate and share the 50,000 images with Seequent’s team to upload in Imago,” explains Jeremy. “But on completion having easy, instant access to all of our images and all stored in one place was well worth it.”
Imago has the search convenience of Drillhole ID and seamless integration with other 3D geological modelling software. And provides instant access to imagery full of rich information to better support modelling and interpretation.
“Imago has added so much value across the entire Fraser Range project team,” says Jeremy.
“It’s a fast, intuitive everyday tool and now a key part of our workflow.”
“We can easily find the information needed, quickly reference each drill hole, pick up the workflows – and run with them,” he adds.
IGO’s Fraser Range Ni-Co-Cu exploration project, east of Norseman in Western Australia (Image Credit: IGO)
Teams can collaborate over a cloud-based virtual core shed.
The quality of Imago images means you can preserve original observations from when the core was first collected.
“I like to continuously refer to the drillcore photos when I’m studying a target,” says Jeremy.
Without a good photo database, the alternative is to unstack drill-hole pallets and trays, requiring a lot of manual labour and effort.
“When you bring in the Imago capture process at the start of the workflow, it definitely reduces a lot of that manual data entry and helps avoid errors,” explains Jeremy.
The online portal allows you to search and quick-view photos while the cloud-based virtual core-shed means you can share images anytime, anywhere.
“Whether you’re interpreting data, writing drill hole or stakeholder reports, or for quality assurance, there are many everyday tasks that require looking at core photos,” he says.
“It’s important to be able to get as many expert eyes as possible quickly over the images to maximise each unique perspective.”
“And for teams working remotely Imago is a fast and easy way to collaborate over the latest data and drill results.”
Imago is your exploration photo consolidation tool to capture, collect and connect (Image Credit: IGO)
Focused on a more sustainable energy future
Seequent enables smarter subsurface decisions to support the unprecedented demand for battery minerals, with less environmental impact.
“A better understanding of the subsurface allows us to be more confident in our decision-making, to use resources more wisely and reduce our footprint,” says Jeremy.
Going forward, IGO teams are looking to roll out the convenience of Imago across other exploration projects too.
“We appreciate that the Seequent team warmly receives and acts on our feedback to continually improve and future-proof Imago,” he says.
“We’re currently testing imagery from different types of drilling, such as microscopic and chip photos. And it would be amazing to see our usage of Imago expand to cover a variety of images with the same searchable convenience.”