Multiply overlapping Mars imagery, Looking for 5 or more images of same spot Options

[elakdawalla]

A reader (Bill Green, a retired JPL guy who helped develop MIPL) alerted me to a recent article in IEEE Computer, "Aerial Computer Vision for a 3D Virtual Habitat" (subscription only, I'm afraid) that describes a method that they refer to as the "high overlap paradigm" for developing extremely high-resolution digital elevation models by using many aerial photos from many look angles. I contacted the paper's first author, Franz Leberl, to see if he was interested in attempting to apply his method to images from Mars, and the answer was: Yes, he's very interested. So my question is, where on Mars do we have sets of highly overlapping images? Here's what Leberl said he needed:

For a fully automated process that associates a surface elevation with each pixel, we need 5 or so images of each terrain point. If it is more, that is even better. If you have a focal length and location of the principal point, that would be helpful also. We do not need any data about the camera positions; but if you had such data, we would want to compare our results to those you have. And if you also had previous results in the form of a digital surface model created by traditional two-image stereo, we could use this as well for an analysis and comparison.

Can the hivemind of UMSF help me connect Leberl with the data he would need to make some seriously detailed DTMs?

[djellison]

It would make far more sense to use the orbital imagery to produce the best DEM possible, THEN use surface data to verify the accuracy of that DEM and thus hopefully the reliability of the technique.

[Pertinax]

A bit more cost efficient as well!

-- Pertinax