Issue with Urban Infrastructure (Buildings/Poles) in Tree Extraction – TLS Data

[msacee2012-a11y]

Hello,

I am running the RayCloud tools on Terrestrial LiDAR (TLS) data collected in urban areas. My dataset includes buildings and electric poles located near the target trees.

After successfully running the pipeline, I am facing a significant issue: building structures and electric poles remain visible in the "clean trees" output and are being incorrectly classified and counted as trees in the final model. See these attachments:

I have used the following steps for my processing:

My Data:
All Quad Trees March 2025_Part1.ply
All Quad Trees March 2025_Part2.ply

1. RAYIMPORT
   rayimport "All Quad Trees March 2025_Part1.ply" 0,0,0 --max_intensity 0
   rayimport "All Quad Trees March 2025_Part2.ply" 0,0,0 --max_intensity 0
2. RAYCOLOUR
   raycolour "All Quad Trees March 2025_Part1_raycloud.ply" alpha 1
   raycolour "All Quad Trees March 2025_Part2_raycloud.ply" alpha 1
3. Raycombine
   raycombine all "Part1_Full_coloured.ply" "Part2_Full_coloured.ply" --output All_Quad_Raw_Master.ply
4. Raydecimate
   raydecimate All_Quad_Raw_Master.ply 5 cm
5. Raydenoise
   raydenoise All_Quad_Raw_Master_decimated.ply 4 cm
6. Raysmooth
   raysmooth All_Quad_Raw_Master_decimated_denoised.ply
   rayextract terrain All_Quad_Raw_Master_decimated_denoised_smooth.ply
   rayextract trees All_Quad_Raw_Master_decimated_denoised_smooth.ply
   All_Quad_Raw_Master_decimated_denoised_smooth_mesh.ply
   --max_diameter 0.9 --use_rays --girth_height_ratio 0.13

Final Output:

1. All_Quad_Raw_Master_decimated_denoised_smooth_trees.txt
2. All_Quad_Raw_Master_decimated_denoised_smooth_segmented.ply
3. All_Quad_Raw_Master_decimated_denoised_smooth_trees_mesh.ply

My Questions:

• How can I remove these building structures and electric poles from the tree model? Are there specific parameters in any steps that can help differentiate between biological tree structures and man-made vertical objects?
• Is there a recommended way to filter these out so they do not appear in my _segmented.ply or _trees.txt results?

I look forward to your guidance on how to refine the extraction to include only the actual trees.

[thomas-lowe]

Hi,
rayextract trees does not classify structures. It only distinguishes trees from undergrowth using the --height_min parameter. You will need to use some external tool to distinguish non-tree structures. If the tool colours them then raysplit can remove them from the cloud.

For the buildings you could do this manually using raysplit box (you can get the location of points in cloudcompare/meshlab with the point picker). For power poles you could also try raysplit capsule.

[msacee2012-a11y]

Thank you very much for your observations and suggestions.