Several of us just returned from the ILMF 2010 conference in Denver, Colorado. What was near and dear to my heart there was the interest in LiDAR compression. Several presentations focused on this (linked items below are PDF documents):

• “Storing and Managing LiDAR Data” by Jon Skiffington (LizardTech)
• “Compressing LiDAR Waveform Data” by Dr. Charles Toth (Ohio State University)
• “laszip: Lossless Compression for LiDAR in LAS Format” (poster) by Dr Martin Isenburg (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)
• “LiDAR Compression with MrSID Generation 4” by Michael Rosen (LizardTech)

My sense from talking with the other presenters is that this is something for which the industry is hungry. Dr. Toth is researching ways to compress waveform data (as opposed to the spatial and other attributes of the point cloud itself). He presented two approaches:  one based on a wavelet transform and another based on compressive sensing.

Dr. Isenburg presented a poster session describing laszip, a compression mechanism for LAS files. He described it to me as being primarily focused on archiving LAS data and so rather orthogonal to our efforts, which emphasize accessibility and integration. Also, laszip is free.

Mr. Skiffington’s presentation focused on our LiDAR Compressor product while your author’s presentation gave an outline of the motivation for and an algorithmic explanation of the underlying MG4 technology.

I had several people asked for copies of my presentation so I’ve provided the link above.

Michael Rosen
LizardTech, Engineering Mgr
mrosen at lizardtech dot com

Tags: compressing LiDAR, ILMF, ILMF Conference 2010, laszip, LiDAR, LiDAR waveform data, MG4