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Assessment of camera focal length influence on canopy reconstruction quality

Unoccupied aerial vehicles (UAV) with RGB-cameras are affordable and versatile devices for the generation of a series of remote sensing products that can be used for forest inventory tasks, such as creating high-resolution orthomosaics and canopy height models. The latter may serve purposes including tree species identification, forest damage assessments, canopy height or timber stock assessments. Besides flight and image acquisition parameters such as image overlap, flight height, and weather conditions, the focal length, which determines the opening angle of the camera lens, is a parameter that influences the reconstruction quality. Despite its importance, the effect of focal length on the quality of 3D reconstructions of forests has received little attention in the literature. Shorter focal lengths result in more accurate distance estimates in the nadir direction since small angular errors lead to large positional errors in narrow opening angles. In this study, 3D reconstructions of four UAV-acquisitions with different focal lengths (21, 35, 50, and 85 mm) on a 1 ha mature mixed forest plot were compared to reference point clouds derived from high quality Terrestrial Laser Scans. Shorter focal lengths (21 and 35 mm) led to a higher agreement with the TLS scans and thus better reconstruction quality, while at 50 mm, quality losses were observed, and at 85 mm, the quality was considerably worse. F1-scores calculated from a voxel representation of the point clouds amounted to 0.254 with 35 mm and 0.201 with 85 mm. The precision with 21 mm focal length was 0.466 and 0.302 with 85 mm. We thus recommend a focal length no longer than 35 mm during UAV Structure from Motion (SfM) data acquisition for forest management practices.

Availability
20621.3678Perpustakaan BIG (Eksternal Harddisk)Available
Detail Information
Series Title
ISPRS Open Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing
Call Number
621.3678
Publisher
Amsterdam : Elsevier.,
Collation
8 hlm PDF, 10.100 KB
Language
Inggris
ISBN/ISSN
1872-8235
Classification
621.3678
Content Type
text
Media Type
-
Carrier Type
-
Edition
Vol.6, December 2022
Subject(s)
Forest inventory
UAS
TLS
Aerial survey
Focal length
Structure from motion
Specific Detail Info
-
Statement of Responsibility
Other version/related

No other version available

File Attachment
  • Assessment of camera focal length influence on canopy reconstruction quality
    Unoccupied aerial vehicles (UAV) with RGB-cameras are affordable and versatile devices for the generation of a series of remote sensing products that can be used for forest inventory tasks, such as creating high-resolution orthomosaics and canopy height models. The latter may serve purposes including tree species identification, forest damage assessments, canopy height or timber stock assessments. Besides flight and image acquisition parameters such as image overlap, flight height, and weather conditions, the focal length, which determines the opening angle of the camera lens, is a parameter that influences the reconstruction quality. Despite its importance, the effect of focal length on the quality of 3D reconstructions of forests has received little attention in the literature. Shorter focal lengths result in more accurate distance estimates in the nadir direction since small angular errors lead to large positional errors in narrow opening angles. In this study, 3D reconstructions of four UAV-acquisitions with different focal lengths (21, 35, 50, and 85 mm) on a 1 ha mature mixed forest plot were compared to reference point clouds derived from high quality Terrestrial Laser Scans. Shorter focal lengths (21 and 35 mm) led to a higher agreement with the TLS scans and thus better reconstruction quality, while at 50 mm, quality losses were observed, and at 85 mm, the quality was considerably worse. F1-scores calculated from a voxel representation of the point clouds amounted to 0.254 with 35 mm and 0.201 with 85 mm. The precision with 21 mm focal length was 0.466 and 0.302 with 85 mm. We thus recommend a focal length no longer than 35 mm during UAV Structure from Motion (SfM) data acquisition for forest management practices.
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