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Extraction of digital terrain model based on regular mesh generation in mountainous areas

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Abstract

Airborne LiDAR technology is a popular technique to quickly acquire high-precision information of the ground and the objects above it. Moreover, filtering the data is one of the necessary core processing steps. In recent years, many algorithms have been derived from traditional filtering algorithms. However, when applied to LiDAR data obtained from mountainous regions, most algorithms generate numerous omissions and errors when attempting to retain steep terrain features and filter vegetation information. This paper aims to quickly and accurately extract the digital terrain model (DTM) in mountainous regions. To accomplish this goal, a filtering algorithm based on a regular mesh generation strategy is proposed. The proposed algorithm initially divides the huge amount of point cloud data into strips and selects the appropriate spacing to subdivide each strip into equidistant grid data. The grid data is used as the input to an iterative polynomial fitting process, after which the point cloud is classified based on a controlled threshold. The experimental results show that the proposed method can quickly and efficiently classify data of mountains with different characteristics while retaining terrain feature information better than other algorithms. The average accuracy of recognition is greater than 92%. In addition, this algorithm also applies to mountains with lush vegetation.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by Scientific and Technological Development Scheme of Jilin Province (Grant No. 20140520071JH).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science and Technology Department, Jilin University, ChangChun, Jilin Province, 130012, China

    Wenhui Li, Daifeng Han, Huiying Li & Xuezhi Wang

  2. Symbol Computation and Knowledge Engineer of Ministry of Education, Jilin University, ChangChun, Jilin Province, China

    Wenhui Li, Daifeng Han & Huiying Li

  3. Computer science and technology department, Changchun Normal University, Changhun, Jilin Province, 130032, China

    Jinlong Zhu

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  1. Wenhui Li
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  2. Daifeng Han
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  3. Huiying Li
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  4. Xuezhi Wang
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  5. Jinlong Zhu
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Correspondence to Huiying Li.

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Li, W., Han, D., Li, H. et al. Extraction of digital terrain model based on regular mesh generation in mountainous areas. Multimed Tools Appl 77, 6267–6286 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-017-4535-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-017-4535-y

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