Point density evaluation of airborne LiDAR datasets

Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) technology provides the means for fast and accurate acquisition of geospatial data. Quality control of the derived data is an important process for verifying whether the requirements of the scanning mission have been met. Point density presents one of the most important factors for evaluating LiDAR data. This paper presents a new method for evaluating the point density of LiDAR data through by applying methods of computational geometry. This method treats the LiDAR scan with regard to terrain characteristics and divides it into those areas that can be scanned and those that prevent quality scanning and produce weak returns. Point density evaluation is performed using the Voronoi diagram,which allows efficient extraction of actual LiDAR point density.