Automated extraction of corn leaf points from unorganized terrestrial LiDAR point clouds

Terrestrial LiDAR data can be used to extract accurate structure parameters of corn plant and canopy, such as leaf area, leaf distribution, and 3D model. The first step of these applications is to extract corn leaf points from unorganized LiDAR point clouds. This paper focused on an automated extraction algorithm for identifying the points returning on corn leaf from massive, unorganized LiDAR point clouds. In order to mine the distinct geometry of corn leaves and stalk, the Difference of Normal (DoN) method was proposed to extract corn leaf points. Firstly, the normals of corn leaf surface for all points were estimated on multiple scales. Secondly, the directional ambiguity of the normals was eliminated to obtain the same normal direction for the same leaf distribution. Finally, the DoN was computed and the computed DoN results on the optimal scale were used to extract leave points. The quantitative accuracy assessment showed that the overall accuracy was 94.10%, commission error was 5.89%, and omission error was 18.65%. The results indicate that the proposed method is effective and the corn leaf points can be extracted automatically from massive, unorganized terrestrial LiDAR point clouds using the proposed DoN method.