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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-B2-2026-1371-2026</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Using NeRFs for UAV-based 3D reconstruction of complex scenes: A comparison to MVS</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Schulte</surname>
<given-names>Frederik</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>Akwensi</surname>
<given-names>Perpetual</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5099-2931</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Winiwarter</surname>
<given-names>Lukas</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8229-1160</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Unit of Geometry and Surveying, University of Innsbruck, Austria</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>1371</fpage>
<lpage>1380</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Frederik Schulte 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-B2-2026/1371/2026/isprs-archives-XLIX-B2-2026-1371-2026.html">This article is available from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLIX-B2-2026/1371/2026/isprs-archives-XLIX-B2-2026-1371-2026.html</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLIX-B2-2026/1371/2026/isprs-archives-XLIX-B2-2026-1371-2026.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLIX-B2-2026/1371/2026/isprs-archives-XLIX-B2-2026-1371-2026.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>High-resolution 3D documentation of cultural heritage sites is essential for their preservation. While terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) remains the gold standard, it is often cost-intensive compared to photogrammetry. This study evaluates three image-based reconstruction techniques, Multi-View Stereo (MVS), Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) and 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS), by applying them to a complex scene featuring a chapel and its surrounding vegetation, sensed from an uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV). A hybrid TLS/MVS model provides a high-accuracy reference. Using identical interior and exterior camera parameters of the 105 UAV-acquired images, we generate dense point clouds with all methods and assess geometric accuracy and completeness using the M3C2 algorithm. Results show that MVS achieves superior accuracy (standard deviation of all M3C2 distances: MVS = 0.11 m, NeRF = 0.15 m), whereas NeRF attains up to 20% higher completeness, particularly in low-texture and vegetation-occluded regions. The 3DGS point cloud was deemed too sparse and was therefore not used for further analysis. The study highlights the potential of NeRFs to recover partially occluded or sparsely textured geometries that are challenging for MVS and suggests a complementary use of both approaches for cost-efficient documentation of cultural heritage.</p>
</abstract>
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