Normalized digital surface model extraction and slope parameter determination through region growing of UAV data

NDSM (Normalized Digital Surface Model) is key information for the detailed analysis of remote sensing data. Although NDSM can be simply obtained by subtracting a DTM (Digital Terrain Model) from a DSM (Digital Surface Model), in case of UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) data, it is difficult to get an accurate DTM due to high resolution characteristics of UAV data containing a large number of complex objects on the ground such as vegetation and urban structures. In this study, RGB-based UAV vegetation index, ExG (Excess Green) was used to extract initial seed points having low ExG values for region growing such that a DTM can be generated cost-effectively based on high resolution UAV data. For this process, local window analysis was applied to resolve the problem of erroneous seed point extraction from local low ExG points. Using the DSM values of seed points, region growing was applied to merge neighboring terrain pixels. Slope criteria were adopted for the region growing process and the seed points were determined as terrain points in case the size of segments is larger than 0.25 m². Various slope criteria were tested to derive the optimized value for UAV data-based NDSM generation. Finally, the extracted terrain points were evaluated and interpolation was performed using the terrain points to generate an NDSM. The proposed method was applied to agricultural area in order to extract the above ground heights of crops and check feasibility of agricultural monitoring.