
Effective classification of wood and leaf points from terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) point clouds is critical for analyzing and estimating forest attributes such as diameter at breast height (DBH), above-ground biomass (AGB), and wood volume. To address this, we introduce the Wood–Leaf Classification Network (WLC-Net), a deep learning model derived from PointNet++, designed to differentiate between wood and leaf points within tree point clouds. WLC-Net enhances classification accuracy, completeness, and speed by incorporating linearity as an inherent feature, refining the input–output framework, and optimizing the centroid sampling technique. We trained and evaluated WLC-Net using datasets from three distinct tree species, totaling 102 individual tree point clouds, and compared its performance against five existing methods including PointNet++, DGCNN, Krishna Moorthy’s method, LeWoS, and Sun’s method. WLC-Net achieved superior classification accuracy, with overall accuracy (OA) scores of 0.9778, 0.9712, and 0.9508; the mean Intersection over Union (mIoU) scores of 0.9761, 0.9693, and 0.9141; and F1-scores of 0.8628, 0.7938, and 0.9019, respectively. The model also demonstrated high efficiency, processing an average of 102.74 s per million points. WLC-Net has demonstrated notable advantages in wood–leaf classification, including significantly enhanced classification accuracy, improved processing efficiency, and robust applicability across diverse tree species. These improvements stem from its innovative integration of linearity in the model architecture, refined input–output framework, and optimized centroid sampling technique. In addition, WLC-Net also exhibits strong applicability across various tree point clouds and holds promise for further optimization.
FOS: Computer and information sciences, Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV), I.4.6, Computer Science - Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
FOS: Computer and information sciences, Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV), I.4.6, Computer Science - Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
| selected citations These citations are derived from selected sources. This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | 2 | |
| popularity This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network. | Top 10% | |
| influence This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | Average | |
| impulse This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network. | Average |
