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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ISPRS-Annals</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ISPRS-Annals</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">ISPRS Ann. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">2194-9050</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/isprs-annals-XI-2-2026-277-2026</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>ZeD-MAP: Bundle Adjustment Guided Zero-Shot Depth Maps for Real-Time Aerial Imaging</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Iz</surname>
<given-names>Selim Ahmet</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Nex</surname>
<given-names>Francesco</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5712-6902</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Kerle</surname>
<given-names>Norman</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Meissner</surname>
<given-names>Henry</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Berger</surname>
<given-names>Ralf</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Space Research, Berlin, Germany</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>03</day>
<month>07</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>XI-2-2026</volume>
<fpage>277</fpage>
<lpage>284</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Selim Ahmet Iz et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-2-2026/277/2026/isprs-annals-XI-2-2026-277-2026.html">This article is available from https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-2-2026/277/2026/isprs-annals-XI-2-2026-277-2026.html</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-2-2026/277/2026/isprs-annals-XI-2-2026-277-2026.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/XI-2-2026/277/2026/isprs-annals-XI-2-2026-277-2026.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Real-time depth reconstruction from ultra-high-resolution UAV imagery is essential for time-critical geospatial tasks such as disaster response, yet remains challenging due to wide-baseline parallax, large image sizes, low-texture or specular surfaces, occlusions, and strict computational constraints. Recent zero-shot diffusion models offer fast per-image dense predictions without task-specific retraining, and require fewer labelled datasets than transformer-based predictors while avoiding the rigid capture geometry requirement of classical multi-view stereo. However, their probabilistic inference prevents reliable metric accuracy and temporal consistency across sequential frames and overlapping tiles. We present ZeD-MAP, a cluster-level framework that converts a test-time diffusion depth model into a metrically consistent, SLAM-like mapping pipeline by integrating incremental cluster-based bundle adjustment (BA). Streamed UAV frames are grouped into overlapping clusters; periodic BA produces metrically consistent poses and sparse 3D tie-points, which are reprojected into selected frames and used as metric guidance for diffusion-based depth estimation. Validation on ground-marker flights captured at approximately 50 m altitude (GSD &amp;asymp; 0.85 cm/px, ~2,650 m&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; ground coverage per frame) with the DLR Modular Aerial Camera System (MACS) shows that our method achieves sub-meter accuracy, with approximately 0.87 m error in the horizontal (XY) plane and 0.12 m in the vertical (Z) direction, while maintaining per-image runtimes between 1.47 and 4.91 seconds. Results are subject to minor noise from manual point-cloud annotation. These findings show that BA-based metric guidance provides consistency comparable to classical photogrammetric methods while significantly accelerating processing, enabling real-time 3D map generation.</p>
</abstract>
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