Filtering of 3D point clouds using maximum likelihood algorithm

Abstract

Recently, the 3D point cloud (PC) has become more popular as an innovative object representation. However, there is usually noise and outliers in the raw point cloud. It is essential to eliminate the noise from the point cloud and outlier data while maintaining the features and finer details intact. This paper presents a comprehensive method for filtering and classification point clouds using a maximum likelihood algorithm (ML). TOPCON GLS-2000 3D terrestrial laser scanners (TLS) have been used to collect the 3D PC data set; the scan range is up to 350 m. About 30 m apart from the study area. ScanMaster software has been used to import, view, and filter point cloud information. The position information of the points is linked with the training point cloud and the filtered point cloud to derive the nonlinear model using MATLAB software. To evaluate the quality of the denoising results, two error metrics have been used: the average angle (δ) and distance (Dmean) between the ground truth point and the resulting point. The experimental findings demonstrate that the suggested approach can effectively filter out background noise while improving feature preservation. The filtering and classifying technique is more effective and efficient compared to the selected filtering methods when applied to 3D point clouds containing a large number of points and a variety of natural characteristics.