Enhancing the Quality of 3D Lunar Maps Using JAXA’s Kaguya Imagery

As global efforts to explore the Moon intensify,the need for high-quality 3D lunar maps becomes increasinglycritical—particularly for long-distance missions such as NASA’sproposed Endurance rover, which aims to traverse 2,000 kmacross the South Pole–Aitken basin. Kaguya TC images, thoughglobally available at 10 m/pixel, suffer from altitude inaccuraciescaused by stereo matching errors and JPEG-basedcompression artifacts. This paper presents a method to improvethe quality of 3D maps generated from Kaguya TC images,focusing on mitigating the effects of compression-induced noisein disparity maps. We analyze the compression behavior ofKaguya TC imagery, and identify systematic disparity noisepatterns, especially in darker regions. In this paper, we proposea method to enhance 3D map quality by reducing residualnoise in disparity images derived from compressed images. Ourexperimental results show that the proposed method effectivelyreduces elevation noise, enhancing the safety and reliability ofterrain data for future lunar missions.