Crater Delineation by Dynamic Programming

An algorithm to automatically delineate the contour of impact craters detected on remotely sensed images from the surface of Mars is presented in this letter. It processes the crater images in polar coordinates and is constituted by two main steps: edge enhancement, which is constructing an edge map based upon the intensity transitions along radial lines intersecting the center of the crater, and crater delineation, which is determining an optimal path from the minimization of an energy functional by Dynamic Programming. We obtained the performance of 96% of correct crater delineations evaluated in a data set of 1045 craters depicted from High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) and Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) images (resolutions of 0.25-0.50 and 100 m/pixel, respectively) exhibiting a large diversity of terrains, crater dimensions, and degradations.