A New Image Segmentation Method for Individual Tree Recognition Based on Airborne LiDAR Data

Data filtering and image segmentation are two crucial steps in individual tree information extraction based on airborne LiDAR data. In this paper, a new image segmentation method was proposed to isolate individual tree and extract tree height and size information of the tree crowns, which is the fusion of marker-controlled watershed segmentation and valley-following segmentation. This method can perform edge detection effectively compared to methods before because a special detection constraint was added into it. A real data test was given to testify its validation.