Abstract
Part of the rockmass assessment and its application in numerical modelling, within the geotechnical engineering field, is acquiring information such as discontinuity number, density, intensity, size etc., which can be obtained by mapping fracture traces on exposed rockmass surfaces and processing of the recorded field data. Moving past from traditional mapping techniques in the field, fracture traces can be extracted from terrestrial light detection and ranging (LiDAR) point-clouds or LiDAR-derived surface models. However, similarly to field mapping, the extraction of fracture-traces is often done manually. This is an arduous and timely task in most cases. The automatic-detection of such traces is an emerging topic in geotechnical engineering; however, existing methods focus solely on the spatial domain. Space-frequency representations are ideal for detecting singularities due to their localization in space and frequency. Furthermore, they allow multiscale analysis, which is important for isolating LiDAR-data noise and weak traces in lower scales. In this study, three space-frequency transforms are evaluated, namely, (1) wavelet, (2) contourlet, and (3) shearlet. In addition, the well-known methods of Sobel, Prewitt, and Canny for edge detection are used for comparison purposes. The performance of the different edge-detection methods is tested using data collected from the Brockville Tunnel in Ontario, Canada. Numerical and visual assessment show that contourlets and shearlets achieve the highest agreement with manually-extracted traces that are used for validation. The two methods, along with minimal user interaction, can be used in order to increase the efficiency of rockmass mapping and geometric modelling in stability assessment of tunnels, mines, slopes, and related applications.
Similar content being viewed by others
Abbreviations
- DFNs:
-
Discrete fracture networks
- DM:
-
Decision metric
- FD:
-
Fréchet distance
- NFD:
-
Normalized Fréchet distance
- PFOM:
-
Figure of merit
- \({\text{CNF}}/{\text{A}}\) :
-
Cumulative number of fractures/area (1/m2)
- FTL:
-
Fracture trace length (m)
- \(P_{21}\) :
-
Areal fracture intensity (m/m2)
- ρ :
-
Correlation coefficient
References
Alt H, Godau M (1995) Computing the Fréchet distance between two polygonal curves. Int J Comput Geom Appl 5(01n02):75–91
Cacciari PP, Futai MM (2016) Mapping and characterization of rock discontinuities in a tunnel using 3D terrestrial laser scanning. Bull Eng Geol Environ 75(1):223–237
Canny J (1986) A computational approach to edge detection. IEEE Trans Pattern Anal Mach Intell 8:679–698
Chen J, Zhu H, Li X (2016) Automatic extraction of discontinuity orientation from rock mass surface 3D point cloud. Comput Geosci 95:18–31
Cohen A, Daubechies I, Feauveau JC (1992) Biorthogonal bases of compactly supported wavelets. Commun Pure Appl Math 45(5):485–560
Da Cunha A (2008) Geometrical representation, processing, and coding of visual information. Ph.D. thesis, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Da Cunha AL, Do MN (2005) Bi-orthogonal filter banks with directional vanishing moments (image representation applications). In: IEEE international conference on acoustics, speech, and signal processing, Proceedings.(ICASSP’05), vol 4, pp iv–553
Da Cunha AL, Zhou J, Do MN (2006) The nonsubsampled contourlet transform: theory, design, and applications. IEEE Trans Image Process 15(10):3089–3101
Daugman JG (1985) Uncertainty relation for resolution in space, spatial frequency, and orientation optimized by two-dimensional visual cortical filters. JOSA A 2(7):1160–1169
Dershowitz WS, Herda HH (1992) Interpretation of fracture spacing and intensity. In: The 33th US symposium on rock mechanics (USRMS). American Rock Mechanics Association. June 3–5, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Diederichs MS, Lato M, Hutchinson J, Carter M (2013) Lidar surveying for liner condition, rock stability and reconditioning assessment of Canada’s oldest railway tunnel in Brockville, Ontario. In: Proceedings of GeoMontreal 2013—Canadian geotechnical society conference
Do MN, Vetterli M (2005) The contourlet transform: an efficient directional multiresolution image representation. IEEE Trans Image Process 14(12):2091–2106
Easley G, Labate D, Lim WQ (2008) Sparse directional image representations using the discrete shearlet transform. Appl Comput Harmonic Anal 25(1):25–46
Gigli G, Casagli N (2011) Semi-automatic extraction of rock mass structural data from high resolution LIDAR point clouds. Int J Rock Mech Min Sci 48(2):187–198
Haar A (1910) Zur theorie der orthogonalen funktionensysteme. Math Ann 69(3):331–371
International Society of Rock Mechanics (ISRM) (1978) Commission on standardization of laboratory and field tests. Suggested methods for the quantitative description of discontinuities in rock masses. Int J Rock Mech Min Sci Geomech Ab 15:319–368
Kemeny J, Turner K, Norton B (2006) LIDAR for rock mass characterization: hardware, software, accuracy and best-practices. Laser and photogrammetric methods for rock face characterization, 49–62
King EJ, Reisenhofer R, Kiefer J, Lim WQ, Li Z, Heygster G (2015) Shearlet-based edge detection: flame fronts and tidal flats. In: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, International Society for Optics and Photonics, pp 959905–959905
Kovacevic J, Vetterli M (1992) Nonseparable multidimensional perfect reconstruction filter banks and wavelet bases for R/sup n. IEEE Trans Inf Theory 38(2):533–555
Kutyniok G, Lemvig J, Lim WQ (2012) Compactly supported shearlets. In: Approximation theory XIII: San Antonio 2010, Springer, New York, pp 163–186
Labate D, Lim WQ, Kutyniok G, Weiss G (2005) Sparse multidimensional representation using shearlets. In: Optics and photonics, International Society for Optics and Photonics, pp 59140U–59140U
Lato MJ, Vöge M (2012) Automated mapping of rock discontinuities in 3D lidar and photogrammetry models. Int J Rock Mech Min Sci 54:150–158
Lato MJ, Diederichs MS, Hutchinson DJ, Harrap R (2012) Evaluating roadside rockmasses for rockfall hazards using LiDAR data: optimizing data collection and processing protocols. Nat Hazards 60(3):831–864
Li J (2003) A wavelet approach to edge detection. Sam Houston State University, Master of Science
Lu WS, Antoniou A, Xu H (1998) A direct method for the design of 2-D nonseparable filter banks. IEEE Trans Circuits Syst II: Analog Digital Signal Process 45(8):1146–1150
Mallat S, Hwang WL (1992) Singularity detection and processing with wavelets. IEEE Trans Inf Theory 38(2):617–643
Parker JR (2010) Algorithms for image processing and computer vision. Wiley, New York
Phoong SM, Kim CW, Vaidyanathan PP, Ansari R (1995) A new class of two-channel biorthogonal filter banks and wavelet bases. IEEE Trans Signal Process 43(3):649–665
Pratt WK (1978) Digital image processing. Wiley, New York
Prewitt JM (1970) Object enhancement and extraction. Picture Process Psychopictorics 10(1):15–19
Priest SD (1993) Discontinuity analysis for rock engineering, 1st edn. Chapman and Hall, London
Reisenhofer R, Kiefer J, King EJ (2016) Shearlet-based detection of flame fronts. Exp Fluids 57(3):1–14
Richards JA (2013) Remote sensing digital image analysis, 5th edn. Springer, Canberra
Riquelme AJ, Abellán A, Tomás R, Jaboyedoff M (2014) A new approach for semi-automatic rock mass joints recognition from 3D point clouds. Comput Geosci 68:38–52
Shah IA, Kalker AAC (1993) Theory and design of multidimensional QMF sub-band filters from 1-D filters and polynomials using transforms. IEE Proc I Commun Speech Vis 140(1):67–71
Shan H, Ma J, Yang H (2009) Comparisons of wavelets, contourlets and curvelets in seismic denoising. J Appl Geophys 69(2):103–115
Shen L, Bai L (2006) A review on Gabor wavelets for face recognition. Pattern Anal Appl 9(2–3):273–292
Srivastava M (2006) Field verification of a geostatistical method for simulating fracture network models. In: Golden rocks 2006, the 41st US symposium on rock mechanics (USRMS). American Rock Mechanics Association. June 17–21, Golden, Colorado
Sun J, Gu D, Chen Y, Zhang S (2004) A multiscale edge detection algorithm based on wavelet domain vector hidden Markov tree model. Pattern Recogn 37(7):1315–1324
Umili G, Ferrero A, Einstein HH (2013) A new method for automatic discontinuity traces sampling on rock mass 3D model. Comput Geosci 51:182–192
Vazaios I, Vlachopoulos N, Diederichs MS (2017) Integration of Lidar-based structural input and discrete fracture network generation for underground applications. Geotech Geol Eng 35(5):2227–2251
Vetterli M, Kovačević J (1995) Wavelets and subband coding. Prentice Hall PTR, Englewood Clif
Yi S, Labate D, Easley GR, Krim H (2009) A shearlet approach to edge analysis and detection. IEEE Trans Image Process 18(5):929–941
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bolkas, D., Vazaios, I., Peidou, A. et al. Detection of Rock Discontinuity Traces Using Terrestrial LiDAR Data and Space-Frequency Transforms. Geotech Geol Eng 36, 1745–1765 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10706-017-0430-6
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10706-017-0430-6