Automated Detection of Martian Gullies from HiRISE Imagery

Abstract

Gully is a type of young geological feature on the Martian surface, and the study of gullies can significantly contribute to understanding of the geologic history of Martian surface. As a large amount of high-resolution orbital images have been acquired, manual identification and extraction of all gullies is tedious and prohibitively time consuming. Therefore, it is desirable to develop automated methods for detection of Martian gullies to support scientific studies of the gullies. This paper presents an automated gully detection method based on mathematical morphology techniques. The method integrates a series of morphological operators, including area opening and closing, Bottom-Hat transformation, and path opening. Experimental results using HiRISE images at six sites demonstrate promising performance with detection percentage from 76 percent to 94 percent.