Laser & Optoelectronics Progress, Volume. 60, Issue 10, 1011004(2023)

Depth Estimation of Single Photon Lidar in Complex Scenes

Yan Li, Miao Wu, Weiji He*, and Qian Chen
Author Affiliations
  • School of Electronic and Optical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science & Technology, Nanjing 210094, Jiangsu, China
  • show less

    Single photon lidar is widely used to obtain depth and intensity information of 3D scenes. In a complex scene, there are multiple targets with different depths and different reflectivity. In the case of few return photons and high background noise, traditional methods cannot make targeted treatment for these targets. As a result, a single photon lidar depth estimation technique for complex scenes is proposed. The method makes full use of the time-domain correlation of the echo signal to conduct global multi-depth windowing on the lidar 3D point cloud data in the time domain. Additionally, the weighted filling of vacant pixels uses spatial correlation. Under the optimization framework, a Poisson distribution model is established based on the pre-processed lidar 3D point cloud data. To acquire an accurate depth measurement, the minimum of the cost function is finally found using the alternating direction multiplier approach. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method enhances the reconstruction signal-to-noise ratio of the estimated depth image by at least 15% compared with other methods. Compared with other methods under complicated sceneries from a distance, it successfully raises the estimated quality of depth images and increases the robustness to a low photon level.

    Tools

    Get Citation

    Copy Citation Text

    Yan Li, Miao Wu, Weiji He, Qian Chen. Depth Estimation of Single Photon Lidar in Complex Scenes[J]. Laser & Optoelectronics Progress, 2023, 60(10): 1011004

    Download Citation

    EndNote(RIS)BibTexPlain Text
    Save article for my favorites
    Paper Information

    Category: Imaging Systems

    Received: Nov. 8, 2022

    Accepted: Dec. 12, 2022

    Published Online: May. 17, 2023

    The Author Email: He Weiji (hewj@mail.njust.edu.cn)

    DOI:10.3788/LOP222990

    Topics