Skeletonization of laser-scanned trees in the 3D raster domain

Abstract

The paper introduces storage and processing of 3-dimensional point clouds, obtained by terrestrial laser scanning, in the 3D raster domain. The objects under consideration are trees in production orchards. The purpose is to automatically identify the structure of such trees in terms of the number of branches, their lengths and their thicknesses. An important step in the process is skeletonization. On the basis of a previously developed methodology, a new skeletonization algorithm is developed, which delivers improved results.