Recognition and Detection of Impact Craters from EO Products

Impact craters represent a novel and fundamental field of research in Solar System studies. The quest for Earth impact craters entails the exploitation of Earth Observation products and of their processing for the identification of crater features, their detection and possible recognition. In the past decades, impacts by extraterrestrial bodies were regarded as an interesting but certainly not important phenomenon in the spectrum of geological processes affecting the dynamic evolution of the Earth. On the contrary, at the present, the attention devoted to this phenomenon is significantly increased, thanks to the important role played by planetary exploration. According to planetary scientists [1], impact cratering was a dominant geological process during the growth of the planetary bodies of the Solar System. The emerging of this kind of view of planets as geological objects, places the search for unknown impact craters as a basic element for the study of the evolution of the planets, and in particular of the Earth. In this context, this paper addresses the issue of recognition and detection of impact craters on the Earth by using Earth Observation products (i.e. remote sensing images). In particular, approaches based on the Hough Transform and on the Radial Consistency measure are considered and compared. In addition, novel techniques (based on the use of the K-means algorithm and of stochastic processes) for the reduction of the computational load associated with the considered approaches are described. Preliminary experimental results are reported that point out advantages and disadvantages of the considered methods.