Treescan V. A second generation system for forestry pre-harvest inventory assessment of large plantation trees

This paper describes the design and implementation of a specialised high aspect ratio, image capture and processing system developed for an industrial client. The process of technology transfer is also briefly discussed as an influence on the design. The system is designed to capture, store and process images of standing forest trees of up to 40 m in height and has a horizontal field of view of about 3 m. In this system high aspect ratio images are produced by the automatic combination of a series of overlapping two dimensional images. The system allows indirect tree stem diameter measurements accurate to within +1 cm in a typical diameter of 50 cm and height measurements to within /spl plusmn/20 cm at the height of 30m. The image capture system is rugged and portable for use in plantation forests.