COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF 3D POINT CLOUDS GENERATED FROM A FREEWARE AND TERRESTRIAL LASER SCANNER

Abstract. In the recent past, several heritage structures have faced destruction due to both human-made incidents and natural calamities that have caused a great loss to the human race regarding its cultural achievements. In this context, the importance of documenting such structures to create a substantial database cannot be emphasised enough. The Clock Tower of Dehradun, India is one such structure. There is a lack of sufficient information in the digital domain, which justified the need to carry out this study. Thus, an attempt has been made to gauge the possibilities of using open source 3D tools such as VSfM to quickly and easily obtain point clouds of an object and assess its quality. The photographs were collected using consumer grade cameras with reasonable effort to ensure overlap. The sparse reconstruction and dense reconstruction were carried out to generate a 3D point cloud model of the tower. A terrestrial laser scanner (TLS) was also used to obtain a point cloud of the tower. The point clouds obtained from the two methods were analyzed to understand the quality of the information present; TLS acquired point cloud being a benchmark to assess the VSfM point cloud. They were compared to analyze the point density and subjected to a plane-fitting test for sample flat portions on the structure. The plane-fitting test revealed the planarity of the point clouds. A Gauss distribution fit yielded a standard deviation of 0.002 and 0.01 for TLS and VSfM, respectively. For more insight, comparisons with Agisoft Photoscan results were also made.