A tree crown edge-aware clipping algorithm for airborne LiDAR point clouds

Highlights • Adapt drone path planning theory to point cloud clipping. • Integrate crown edge and distance features from CHM for detecting cutting lines. • Optimize cutting lines with the minimized integrated feature values. • Preserve the complete crowns near the cutting lines. Dividing a forest point cloud dataset into tiles is a common practice in point cloud processing (e.g., individual tree segmentation), aimed at addressing memory constraints and optimizing processing efficiency. Existing methods typically utilize automatic regular clipping (e.g., rectangular clipping), which tends to result in splitting tree crowns along the cutting lines. To preserve the completeness of tree crowns within predefined clipping boundaries (e.g., rectangles), we develop a tree crown edge-aware (E-A) point cloud clipping algorithm, named E-A algorithm. Firstly, the crown edge and distance features are enhanced and quantified using mathematical morphology and nearest neighbor pixel methods. Then, these two features are linearly weighted and integrated for cutting line detection. Finally, the optimal cutting lines are detected by exploring a set of edges with the minimum sum of integrated feature values. E-A algorithm was tested with airborne LiDAR point clouds collected from China’s Saihanba Forest Farm, comparing it against regular clipping methods. The results indicate that E-A algorithm can automatically and effectively emphasize preserving tree crown completeness within predefined clipping boundaries. It reduces crown fragmentation errors by 73.29% on average and maintains an average area difference of 6.42% compared to regular clippings. This algorithm provides a crucial tool for forest point cloud applications.