Stone instance segmentation of rubble masonry based on laser scanning point clouds

Laser scanning allows for objective area-based analysis of water dam structures to enable targeted interventions in case of displacements, requiring comparison of the same areas over different epochs. This comparison improves if identical areas, e.g. stones, from multiple epochs can be automatically derived in advance. We present an instance segmentation algorithm based on a 3D point cloud with reflected intensity information to identify individual stones in rubble masonry dams that can be used within deformation monitoring. The algorithm uses initial k-means classification followed by image-based processing steps, resulting in a segmented 3D point cloud with individual stones. It is evaluated against a manually labeled reference and analyzed on terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and UAV-based data sets. Correctly identified stones are 89.92% for TLS and 90.82% for UAV data. Additionally, stone centroids and shapes were evaluated without significant deviation. A first outlook on deformation analysis was provided using ICP matching of stones from two simulated epochs. • Improvement of deformaton monitoring with point clouds by detectng stone objects. • Novel approach for instance segmentaton in rubble masonry. • Evaluaton based on reference data sets from UAV-based laser scanning and TLS. • Demonstraton of the potental in deformaton analysis using ICP matching.