Complete Scene Reconstruction by Merging Images and Laser Scans

TL;DR

This paper presents a three-step pipeline for complete architectural scene reconstruction by integrating multi-view images and laser scans, improving accuracy and coverage in large-scale 3D modeling.

Contribution

It introduces a novel framework that automatically plans laser scan locations and merges images with laser scans in a coarse-to-fine manner for comprehensive scene reconstruction.

Findings

Effective reconstruction of ancient Chinese architectures.

Automatic planning of laser scanning positions.

Successful merging of images and laser scans in experiments.

Abstract

Image based modeling and laser scanning are two commonly used approaches in large-scale architectural scene reconstruction nowadays. In order to generate a complete scene reconstruction, an effective way is to completely cover the scene using ground and aerial images, supplemented by laser scanning on certain regions with low texture and complicated structure. Thus, the key issue is to accurately calibrate cameras and register laser scans in a unified framework. To this end, we proposed a three-step pipeline for complete scene reconstruction by merging images and laser scans. First, images are captured around the architecture in a multi-view and multi-scale way and are feed into a structure-from-motion (SfM) pipeline to generate SfM points. Then, based on the SfM result, the laser scanning locations are automatically planned by considering textural richness, structural complexity of the scene and spatial layout of the laser scans. Finally, the images and laser scans are accurately merged in a coarse-to-fine manner. Experimental evaluations on two ancient Chinese architecture datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed complete scene reconstruction pipeline.