QUALIFICATION OF POINT CLOUDS MEASURED BY SFM SOFTWARE

Abstract. This paper proposes a qualification method of a point cloud created by SfM (Structure-from-Motion) software. Recently, SfM software is popular for creating point clouds. Point clouds created by SfM Software seems to be correct, but in many cases, the result does not have correct scale, or does not have correct coordinates in reference coordinate system, and in these cases it is hard to evaluate the quality of the point clouds. To evaluate this correctness of the point clouds, we propose to use the difference between point clouds with different source of images. If the shape of the point clouds with different source of images is correct, two shapes of different source might be almost same. To compare the two or more shapes of point cloud, iterative-closest-point (ICP) is implemented. Transformation parameters (rotation and translation) are iteratively calculated so as to minimize sum of squares of distances. This paper describes the procedure of the evaluation and some test results.