Method for identifying individual trees in airborne lidar data and corresponding computer program product

A method for identifying individual trees in airborne lidar data, comprising the steps of:

• a. obtaining lidar data of a group of one or more trees to be separated into individual trees, the lidar data comprising a plurality of lidar data points;
• b. define voxels in a regular 3D grid on the basis of the lidar data points;
• c. applying an image segmentation algorithm to obtain at least one segment comprising a subset of the 3D voxels;
• wherein the following steps are performed if at least two segments are obtained in step c:
• d. for each of a first segment and a second neighbouring segment of said at least two segments:
• I. find the root voxel of said segment, the root voxel being a voxel having the lowest height of the voxels of said segment;
• II. find the branch voxels of said segment, wherein a branch voxel is a voxel connected directly or indirectly to the root voxel;
• e. merging the first segment and the neighbouring second segment if:
• I. the distance between the root voxel of the first segment and the root voxel of the second segment is less than a first threshold;
• and
• II. the distance between the root voxel of the first segment and the closest branch voxel of the second segment is less than a second threshold;
• and
• III. the distance between each of the branch voxels of the first segment and the corresponding closest branch voxels of the second segment is less than a third threshold.