Identification of mafic minerals on Mars by nonlinear hyperspectral unmixing

Abstract

Typically, quantitative interpretation of Mars mineralogy from spectra can be retrieved by analyzing the overlaps of absorption features. It is possible to achieve a thorough description of the abundances of each mineral the considered scene is composed of by applying proper deconvolution techniques such as those based on modified Gaussian model (MGM). However, MGM-based methods are sensitive on initial parameters for statistical distribution definition, or they are very time consuming when fully automatized. In this paper, a new method for identification of minerals on Mars surface by means of higher order nonlinear hyperspectral unmixing framework is introduced. Abundance distribution of magmatic minerals (olivine and pyroxenes) compounds is retrieved according to polytope decomposition algorithm. Experimental results show how the proposed method is able to provide actual abundance maps which are highly correlated to those obtained by an automatized MGM-based technique.