A new shape from shading technique with application to Mars Express HRSC images

We have developed a new optimisation based shape from shading algorithm which is able to make use of sophisticated camera and reflectance models and does not require a good initialising surface. Surface shape consistent with ground truth is obtained when the technique is applied to both synthetic rendered surfaces and real images captured by the Mars Express orbiter and HRSC instrument. The obtained surfaces provide improved fine surface detail over that found using stereo techniques and demonstrate the applicability of the technique to real images.

► A new shape from shading algorithm is introduced.
► Performance is tested on artificial and real data.
► Results are consistent with stereo ground truth.