Forest 3D Reconstruction and Individual Tree Parameter Extraction Combining Close-Range Photo Enhancement and Feature Matching

Abstract

An efficient and accurate forest sample plot survey is of great significance to understand the current status of forest resources at the stand or regional scale and the basis of scientific forest management. Close-range photogrammetry (CRP) technology can easily and quickly collect sequence images with high overlapping to reconstruct the 3D model of forest scenes and extract the individual tree parameters automatically and, therefore, can greatly improve the efficiency of forest investigation and has great application potential in forestry visualization management. However, it has some issues in practical forestry applications. First, the imaging quality is affected by the illumination in the forest, resulting in difficulty in feature matching and low accuracy of parameter extraction. Second, the efficiency of 3D forest model reconstruction is limited under complex understory vegetation or the topographic situation in the forest. In addition, the density of point clouds by dense matching directly affects the accuracy of individual tree parameter extraction. This research collected the sequence images of sample plots of four tree species by smartphones in Gaofeng Forest Farm in Guangxi and Wangyedian Forest Farm in Mongolia to analyze the effects of image enhancement, feature detection and dense point cloud algorithms on the efficiency of 3D forest reconstruction and accuracy of individual tree parameter extraction, then proposed a strategy of 3D reconstruction and parameter extraction suitable for different forest scenes. First, we compared the image enhancement effects of median–Gaussian (MG) filtering, single-scale retinex (SSR) and multi-scale retinex (MSR) filtering algorithms. Then, an improved algorithm combining Harris corner detection with speeded-up robust features (SURF) feature detection (Harris+SURF) is proposed, and the feature matching effect is compared with that of a scale invariant feature transform (SIFT) operator. Third, according to the morphological characteristics of the trees in the sequence images, we used the iterative interpolation algorithm of a planar triangulation network based on geometric constraints (GC-based IIPTN) to increase the density of point clouds and reconstruct the 3D forest model, and then extract the position and DBH of the individual trees. The results show that MSR image enhancement can significantly increase the number of matched point pairs. The improved Harris+SURF method can reduce the reconstruction time of the 3D forest model, and the GC-based IIPTN algorithm can improve the accuracy of individual tree parameter extraction. The extracted position of the individual tree is the same as the measured position with the bias within 0.2 m. The accuracy of extracted DBH of Eucalyptus grandis, Taxus chinensis, Larix gmelinii and Pinus tabuliformis is 94%, 95%, 96% and 90%, respectively, which proves that the proposed 3D model reconstruction method based on image enhancement has great potential for tree position and DBH extraction, and also provides effective support for forest resource investigation and visualization management in the future.