Reconstruction of high-frequency lunar digital elevation model using shape from shading

Abstract

This paper deals with a procedure to reconstruct a lunar surface based on fusion of Shape from Shading with absolute depth information exploited from Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter data. The generation of accurate lunar digital elevation model which contains altitude and terrain shape of mission area is critical for lunar exploration mission design. The photoclinometric approach with Shape from Shading yields dense, high-frequency information while range scanning data from Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter complements the photoclinometric reconstruction with low-frequency, large scale reliable depth information. The proposed Shape from Shading algorithm utilizes the laser altimetry data as initial guess and iteratively calculates the high-frequency altitude information from high resolution image. The high-frequency depth variation caused by small crater and boulder is recovered by applying Shape from Shading. © 2018. Published by INCAS.