Registration of Aerial Optical Images with LiDAR Data Using the Closest Point Principle and Collinearity Equations.

Kun Hu,Shunyi Zheng,Rongyong Huang

doi:10.3390/s18061770

Abstract

Registration of large-scale optical images with airborne LiDAR data is the basis of the integration of photogrammetry and LiDAR. However, geometric misalignments still exist between some aerial optical images and airborne LiDAR point clouds. To eliminate such misalignments, we extended a method for registering close-range optical images with terrestrial LiDAR data to a variety of large-scale aerial optical images and airborne LiDAR data. The fundamental principle is to minimize the distances from the photogrammetric matching points to the terrestrial LiDAR data surface. Except for the satisfactory efficiency of about 79 s per 6732 × 8984 image, the experimental results also show that the unit weighted root mean square (RMS) of the image points is able to reach a sub-pixel level (0.45 to 0.62 pixel), and the actual horizontal and vertical accuracy can be greatly improved to a high level of 1/4–1/2 (0.17–0.27 m) and 1/8–1/4 (0.10–0.15 m) of the average LiDAR point distance respectively. Finally, the method is proved to be more accurate, feasible, efficient, and practical in variety of large-scale aerial optical image and LiDAR data.

Highlights

Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) has been an indispensable technology in the field of surveying and mapping, and many researchers agree that photogrammetry and LiDAR are fairly complementary for more accurate and complete products and a higher automation level of processes [1,2,3,4,5]
We extend the method proposed by Zheng et al [57] from close-range images and terrestrial point clouds to large-scale aerial optical images and airborne LiDAR data
The registration of Kim et al [36] is based on plane estimation and alignment for depth consistency between the LiDAR depth map and the optical image depth map generated by using edge-preserving dense matching

Summary

Introduction

Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) has been an indispensable technology in the field of surveying and mapping, and many researchers agree that photogrammetry and LiDAR are fairly complementary for more accurate and complete products and a higher automation level of processes [1,2,3,4,5]. The geometric registration of aerial images with LiDAR data may be achieved by integrating the aerial camera and the laser scanner device with GPS/INS directly. Possible reasons are as follows: (1) the position and orientation records of some early images were lost due to human factors; (2) as collected by different platforms or in different periods, some optical images and LiDAR data may be referenced to different national coordinate frames without known coordinate transformation parameters; (3) there are some system errors in actual integrated sensor orientation (ISO) system, such as lever-arms, boresights, synchronizations, and interior orientation parameters, etc. It is still necessary to research on the geometric registration of aerial optical images with LiDAR data, and this is what we focus on in this paper

Results

Discussion

Conclusion