Filtering of Laser Altimetry Data Using a Slope Adaptive Filter

A point set obtained by laser altimetry represents points from not only the ground surface but also objects found on it. For civil works applications points representing the surface of non-ground objects have to be removed from the point set in a filtering process. This paper describes modifications made to an existing “slope based” filtering algorithm, and presents some results obtained from the use of the filter. The “slope based” filter operates on the assumption that terrain slopes do not rise above a certain threshold, and that features in the data that have slopes above this threshold do not belong to the natural terrain surface. However, this assumption limits the use of the filter to terrain with gentle slopes. To overcome this limitation, the filter was modified in manner that the threshold varies with respect to the slope of the terrain. The results of tests carried out using the modified filter confirm that the modification reduces the number of Type I errors (ground points in steep terrain are not filtered off). Further numerical comparison of the filter output with a reference data set for the same site (obtained photogrammetrically) show that the filter generates relatively minimal Type II errors. The output of the modified slope filter was also compared with the output from a filtering found in the commercial software package, “Terrascan”.