Researchers develop algorithm to identify individual grains in planetary regolith
Instruments on the Curiosity Mars rover not only measure the chemistry of rocks, elemental abundances of soils and wind speeds, but also take an incredible number of images from both mast-mounted cameras and up-close imaging systems mounted to robotic arms. The process of analyzing soil images can be daunting, particularly when there are thousands of images and when the particles can be on the order of only 5-10 pixels wide. A team of researchers, led by Suniti Karunatillake at LSU's Department of Geology and Geophysics, and including Stony Brook University, USGS-Flagstaff AZ, and Rider University, developed an image analysis and segmentation algorithm specifically to aid planetary scientists with this very basic, but often difficult, task.