Extraction of discontinuity orientations in point clouds

Discontinuities dominantly influence the mechanical behavior of rock masses. Thus, it is of crucial importance in rock engineering to have a profound knowledge about the discontinuity network. Traditional measuring techniques provide only a rough knowledge about a discontinuity network and are prone to human bias. To increase the reliability of discontinuity models, digital mapping techniques using data from remote sensing, like Close-Range Terrestrial Digital Photogrammetry, were developed. This paper focuses on the plane identification within 3-D point clouds using MATLAB® (The Mathworks Inc.) and DIPS® (Rocscience Inc.). The 3-D point cloud is generated with the program ShapeMetriX3D (3GSM GmbH). To verify the plane identification with MATLAB® the results are compared with mapping results from ShapeMetriX3D. This research is part of an approach to automate the rock mass characterization by combining information attained by digital image processing and the analysis of the digital surface model.