A critical review of discontinuity plane extraction from 3D point cloud data of rock mass surfaces
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Field investigations of geometric discontinuity properties in rock masses are increasingly using three-dimensional point cloud data. These point clouds sample the rock mass surface and are typically acquired by photogrammetry or LiDAR. The automatic segmentation and extraction of planar surfaces from point cloud data have attracted significant attention among researchers. This paper reviews the capabilities, merits, and limitations of different segmentation methods for discontinuity plane surface extraction and the specific challenges of processing point cloud data collected from rock faces. The segmentation and orientation results of a series of studies on two point cloud datasets of rock mass surfaces are critically discussed. A new set of ground truth orientations for one point cloud and some challenges faced while labeling a ground truth discontinuity plane are presented. Some suggestions to establish reliable and reproducible ground truth orientation results are presented. Two popular open-source software tools (CloudCompare and Discontinuity Set Extractor) for planar surface extraction are reviewed, and their capabilities and shortcomings are discussed. Acquisition of high-quality point cloud data and sharing it on a public repository establishes a basis for researchers to implement their methodologies and meaningfully compare their results to advance the knowledge in the field. Finally, some recommendations for future research and development are summarized.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.003 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".