CGAN-Based Forest Scene 3D Reconstruction from a Single Image

Abstract

Forest scene 3D reconstruction serves as the fundamental basis for crucial applications such as forest resource inventory, forestry 3D visualization, and the perceptual capabilities of intelligent forestry robots in operational environments. However, traditional 3D reconstruction methods like LiDAR present challenges primarily because of their lack of portability. Additionally, they encounter complexities related to feature point extraction and matching within multi-view stereo vision sensors. In this research, we propose a new method that not only reconstructs the forest environment but also performs a more detailed tree reconstruction in the scene using conditional generative adversarial networks (CGANs) based on a single RGB image. Firstly, we introduced a depth estimation network based on a CGAN. This network aims to reconstruct forest scenes from images and has demonstrated remarkable performance in accurately reconstructing intricate outdoor environments. Subsequently, we designed a new tree silhouette depth map to represent the tree’s shape as derived from the tree prediction network. This network aims to accomplish a detailed 3D reconstruction of individual trees masked by instance segmentation. Our approach underwent validation using the Cityscapes and Make3D outdoor datasets and exhibited exceptional performance compared with state-of-the-art methods, such as GCNDepth. It achieved a relative error as low as 8% (with an absolute error of 1.76 cm) in estimating diameter at breast height (DBH). Remarkably, our method outperforms existing approaches for single-image reconstruction. It stands as a cost-effective and user-friendly alternative to conventional forest survey methods like LiDAR and SFM techniques. The significance of our method lies in its contribution to technical support, enabling the efficient and detailed utilization of 3D forest scene reconstruction for various applications.