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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ISPRS-Archives</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ISPRS-Archives</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">2194-9034</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/isprs-archives-XLIX-B2-2026-1125-2026</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>A Comparative Study of Deep Learning and Unsupervised Segmentation Methods for
Individual Tree Delineation from LiDAR Point Clouds</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wang</surname>
<given-names>Jinhong</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Yao</surname>
<given-names>Wei</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7704-0615</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Yin</surname>
<given-names>Tiangang</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Spatial Intelligence and Urban Computing, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>State Key Lab for Ecological Security of Regions and Cities, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>23</day>
<month>07</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>XLIX-B2-2026</volume>
<fpage>1125</fpage>
<lpage>1132</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Jinhong Wang et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLIX-B2-2026/1125/2026/isprs-archives-XLIX-B2-2026-1125-2026.html">This article is available from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLIX-B2-2026/1125/2026/isprs-archives-XLIX-B2-2026-1125-2026.html</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLIX-B2-2026/1125/2026/isprs-archives-XLIX-B2-2026-1125-2026.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLIX-B2-2026/1125/2026/isprs-archives-XLIX-B2-2026-1125-2026.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Individual tree segmentation from LiDAR is central to automated inventory, yet many evaluations cover only one forest type or one methodological family. It also remains unclear whether point-level and instance-level metrics rank methods in the same order, which complicates operational choices. We therefore harmonise preprocessing, a binary tree versus non-tree semantic task, and a joint evaluation protocol. Representative unsupervised (graph-based TreeIso; region-growing TreeX) and deep learning (vote-based TreeLearn; mask-based ForestFormer3D) pipelines are compared on both public benchmarks and a fused unmanned aerial and mobile laser scanning benchmark from rugged subtropical Hong Kong woodland called HKTrees. Performance is strongest on regular coniferous plots. Broadleaved heterogeneity and crown overlap lower instance recall relative to semantic scores. HKTrees is the hardest regime and shows pronounced domain shift. Point-level and instance-level rankings are not always aligned. We discuss trade-offs in annotation cost, generalisation, and interpretability and outline expansion of HKTrees dataset for larger-scale training.</p>
</abstract>
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