  We present a three dimensional (3D) extinction analysis in the region toward
the supernova remnant (SNR) S147 (G180.0-1.7) using multi-band photometric data
from the Xuyi Schmidt Telescope Photometric Survey of the Galactic Anticentre
(XSTPS-GAC), 2MASS and WISE. We isolate a previously unrecognised dust
structure likely to be associated with SNR S147. The structure, which we term
as "S147 dust cloud", is estimated to have a distance $d$ = 1.22 $\pm$ 0.21
kpc, consistent with the conjecture that S147 is associated with pulsar PSR
J0538 + 2817. The cloud includes several dense clumps of relatively high
extinction that locate on the radio shell of S147 and coincide spatially with
the CO and gamma-ray emission features. We conclude that the usage of CO
measurements to trace the SNR associated MCs is unavoidably limited by the
detection threshold, dust depletion, and the difficulty of distance estimates
in the outer Galaxy. 3D dust extinction mapping may provide a better way to
identify and study SNR-MC interactions.
