Feature extraction and automatic detection of martian impact craters from 3D meshes

In this paper, we propose a novel feature extraction algorithm based on curvature analysis over the 3D data and the grayscale information extracted from the images. The performance of the method is tested on 3D mesh data, provided by Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) and compared to benchmark research work. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can achieve better accuracy in comparison with other crater detection methods and have smaller computational complexity.