Analysis and removal of artifacts in 3-D LADAR data

Abstract

Mixed pixels are points in LADAR data which occur when the measurement beam intersects two objects at within a certain range of distances apart. The resulting return signal represents data from both objects; the laser electronics read this as a single point, but not at the real location of either object. As such, mixed pixels present an obstacle to accurate analysis of a scene. We present a survey of mixed pixel phenomena and a method of removing mixed pixels from scenes stored as 3-D points. Our method does not depend on the sensor used to originally collect the data, and is efficient and effective.