Atmospheric Correction for High-Resolution Shape from Shading on Mars

Abstract

Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) of planet Mars are crucial for many remote sensing applications and for landing site characterization of rover missions. Shape from Shading (SfS) is known to work well as a complementary method to greatly enhance the quality of photogrammetrically obtained DEMs of planetary surfaces with respect to the effective resolution and the overall accuracy. In this work, we extend our previous lunar shape and albedo from shading framework by embedding the Hapke photometric reflectance model in an atmospheric model such that it is applicable to Mars. Compared to previous approaches, the proposed method is capable of directly estimating the atmospheric parameters from a given scene without the need for external data, and assumes a spatially varying albedo. The DEMs are generated from imagery of the Context Camera (CTX) onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and are validated for clear and opaque atmospheric conditions. We analyze the necessity of using atmospheric compensation depending on the atmospheric conditions. For low optical depths, the Hapke model without an atmospheric component is still applicable to the Martian surface. For higher optical depths, atmospheric compensation is required to obtain good quality DEMs.