A Novel Dense Image Matching Point Cloud Filtering Algorithm Integrating Visible Light and Progressive Triangulated Irregular Network Densification for High-Accuracy Mining Subsidence Monitoring

Effective monitoring of surface damage in mining areas is vital for ecological restoration. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been widely used to obtain ground subsidence data owing to their low cost and ease of operation. The images captured by UAVs can generate dense image matching (DIM) point clouds, which, after screening, can be used to create a digital elevation model (DEM) required for deformation analysis. Existing filtering algorithms mainly rely on the spatial geometric features of point clouds and rarely utilize color information, which limits their accuracy in areas with vegetation coverage. To address this issue, this study proposes a H-PTD method that combines visible light with progressive triangulated irregular network densification (PTD). First, initial ground seeds are selected based on the H value in the HSV space. Subsequently, a triangulated irregular network (TIN) is constructed, and iterative densification is performed by evaluating the relationship between the target point and adjacent triangular faces, thereby achieving an accurate distinction between ground and non-ground. Evaluated on three terrain datasets and against five classical methods, the results indicate that the Total error in the H-PTD cross-matrix is controlled between 2.9% and 7.8%, and remains below 8% overall. The standard deviation of the DEM difference is around 0.02 m. Compared to other methods, H-PTD shows higher filtering accuracy and better terrain adaptability, making it more promising for monitoring mining areas and providing a more reliable tool for subsidence detection based on UAVs.