Performance of tree stem isolation algorithms for terrestrial laser scanning point clouds

LiDAR sensors present increasing popularity in the Forestry sector, due to its capability of acquiring high resolution three dimensional data of the forest, useful to a variety of applications. Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) consists of a way to collect large amounts of forest data at the plot lev...

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Autor principal: De Conto, Tiago
Formato: H2
Lenguaje:Inglés
Publicado: SLU/Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre 2016
Materias:
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author De Conto, Tiago
author_browse De Conto, Tiago
author_facet De Conto, Tiago
author_sort De Conto, Tiago
collection Epsilon Archive for Student Projects
description LiDAR sensors present increasing popularity in the Forestry sector, due to its capability of acquiring high resolution three dimensional data of the forest, useful to a variety of applications. Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) consists of a way to collect large amounts of forest data at the plot level, making further 3D modelling and tree reconstruction possible, thus allowing foresters to extract dendrometric variables with high accuracy from those point clouds. In order to enjoy the full potential of TLS technology for forest inventory, tool sets to extract useful information from TLS point clouds of a variety of tree species are required, starting by stem isolation, which is the core of silviculture and the most targeted outcome of forest management everywhere. The present study aimed to assess the performance of three different methods of stem isolation from TLS point clouds of single trees, both boreal and tropical species. At the same time making the algorithms available as an open source R package. The methods were adapted from three main authors. They rely on finding one main trunk in the point cloud, followed by a circle or cylinder fitting procedure on trunk sections to precisely extract only the stem points. The circle-fit based method had better performance in most cases. Accuracy was higher for all algorithms when tested on boreal trees point clouds, with stem diameter RMSEs ranging from 1.53 to 3.15 cm. For the tropical species the RMSEs ranged from 3.50 to 7.54 cm. Best diameter estimations were obtained for Pinus sylvestris, followed by Picea abies, Eucalyptus sp. and Pinus taeda, respectively. All point clouds had reduced density, keeping less than 300 thousand points per tree, and processing time varied from a few seconds up to 20 min/tree, depending on the method applied and point cloud size.
format H2
id RepoSLU9502
institution Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
language Inglés
publishDate 2016
publishDateSort 2016
publisher SLU/Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre
publisherStr SLU/Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre
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spelling RepoSLU95022016-09-15T08:43:00Z Performance of tree stem isolation algorithms for terrestrial laser scanning point clouds De Conto, Tiago LiDAR cylinder/circle fit taper tropical and boreal tree species robust estimation LiDAR sensors present increasing popularity in the Forestry sector, due to its capability of acquiring high resolution three dimensional data of the forest, useful to a variety of applications. Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) consists of a way to collect large amounts of forest data at the plot level, making further 3D modelling and tree reconstruction possible, thus allowing foresters to extract dendrometric variables with high accuracy from those point clouds. In order to enjoy the full potential of TLS technology for forest inventory, tool sets to extract useful information from TLS point clouds of a variety of tree species are required, starting by stem isolation, which is the core of silviculture and the most targeted outcome of forest management everywhere. The present study aimed to assess the performance of three different methods of stem isolation from TLS point clouds of single trees, both boreal and tropical species. At the same time making the algorithms available as an open source R package. The methods were adapted from three main authors. They rely on finding one main trunk in the point cloud, followed by a circle or cylinder fitting procedure on trunk sections to precisely extract only the stem points. The circle-fit based method had better performance in most cases. Accuracy was higher for all algorithms when tested on boreal trees point clouds, with stem diameter RMSEs ranging from 1.53 to 3.15 cm. For the tropical species the RMSEs ranged from 3.50 to 7.54 cm. Best diameter estimations were obtained for Pinus sylvestris, followed by Picea abies, Eucalyptus sp. and Pinus taeda, respectively. All point clouds had reduced density, keeping less than 300 thousand points per tree, and processing time varied from a few seconds up to 20 min/tree, depending on the method applied and point cloud size. SLU/Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre 2016 H2 eng https://stud.epsilon.slu.se/9502/
spellingShingle LiDAR
cylinder/circle fit
taper
tropical and boreal tree species
robust estimation
De Conto, Tiago
Performance of tree stem isolation algorithms for terrestrial laser scanning point clouds
title Performance of tree stem isolation algorithms for terrestrial laser scanning point clouds
title_full Performance of tree stem isolation algorithms for terrestrial laser scanning point clouds
title_fullStr Performance of tree stem isolation algorithms for terrestrial laser scanning point clouds
title_full_unstemmed Performance of tree stem isolation algorithms for terrestrial laser scanning point clouds
title_short Performance of tree stem isolation algorithms for terrestrial laser scanning point clouds
title_sort performance of tree stem isolation algorithms for terrestrial laser scanning point clouds
topic LiDAR
cylinder/circle fit
taper
tropical and boreal tree species
robust estimation