IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - September 2023 - 21

Airborne Lidar
Data Artifacts
D
ata artifacts are a common occurrence in airborne lidar
point clouds and their derivatives [e.g., intensity images
and digital elevation models (DEMs)]. Defects, such as
voids, holes, gaps, speckles, noise, and stripes, not only degrade
lidar visual quality but also compromise subsequent
data-driven analyses. Despite significant progress in understanding
these defects, end users of lidar data confronted
with artifacts are stymied by the scarcities of both resources
for the dissemination of topical advances and analytic software
tools. The situation is exacerbated by the wide-ranging
array of potential internal and external factors, with examples
including weather/atmospheric/Earth surface conditions,
system settings, and laser receiver-transmitter axial
alignment, that underlie most data artifact issues. In this
article, we provide a unified overview of artifacts commonly
found in airborne lidar point clouds and their derivatives
and survey the existing literature for solutions to resolve
these issues. The presentation is from an end-user perspective
to facilitate rapid diagnoses of issues and efficient referrals
to more specialized resources during data collection
and processing stages. We hope that the article can also
serve to promote coalescence of the scientific community,
software developers, and system manufacturers for the ongoing
development of a comprehensive airborne lidar point
cloud processing bundle. Achieving this goal would further
empower end users and move the field forward.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MGRS.2023.3285261
Date of current version: 5 July 2023
SEPTEMBER 2023 IEEE GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING MAGAZINE
What we know thus far
IMAGE LICENSED BY INGRAM PUBLISHING
WAI YEUNG YAN
INTRODUCTION
A number of recent surveys published between 2020 and
2022 project that the lidar market will likely reach US$2.9-
4.71 billion by 2026 to 2030 [1], [2], [3]. Among all the multimodal
platforms, airborne lidar is projected to capture
the majority of the market share because of its wide area
coverage and enhanced data collection capability. Different
advanced airborne lidar systems have been rolled out
lately, including dual/triple laser channel systems operated
with green and infrared laser wavelengths (e.g., Optech Titan
and RIEGL VQ-1560i-DW), dual-wavelength airborne
lidar bathymetry (ALB) (e.g., Optech CZMIL and Leica
Chiroptera-5), dual-channel topographic lidar (e.g., RIEGL
LMS-Q1560 and Optech Galaxy T-2000+G2), and singlephoton
lidar (e.g., Leica SPL100). Despite these high-end
commercial products, the data analytical capability of lidar
is unable to keep pace with hardware development. These
market surveys also emphasize that having insufficient
data processing software tools sets a barrier to further expansion
of the lidar market. As a result, raw lidar data likely
grow at a rate that exceeds our processing capacity with current
software tools.
Traditional satellite remote sensing and aerial photogrammetric
imagery data ride on the advancement of
computer vision, machine learning, and image processing
algorithms. Therefore, commercial software bundles
handling these geospatial imagery data are widespread in
the market and with ever-advancing capability and applicability.
In contrast, airborne lidar data encompass a
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21
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IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - September 2023

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