An entropy-based filtering approach for airborne laser scanning data

Parameter-tuning is a challenging task when generating digital terrain models from airborne laser scanning (light detection and ranging, LiDAR) data. To address this issue, this paper presents a filtering method for near-infrared laser scanning data that exploits the principle of entropy maximization as the optimization objective. The proposed approach generates ground elevation of point cloud by constructing a triangulated irregular network, calculates the entropy of the elevation from different parts, and automatically separates ground and non-ground points by the principle of entropy maximization. Experimental results from different ground surfaces show that the proposed entropy-based filtering method can effectively extract bare-earth points from the point cloud without adjusting thresholds.