LAUSR

Abstract We propose a contextual label-smoothing method to improve the LiDAR classification accuracy in a post-processing step. Under the framework of global graph-structured regularization, we enhance the effectiveness of label smoothing from two aspects. First, each point can collect sufficient label-relevant neighborhood information to verify its label based on an optimal graph. Second, the input label probability set is improved by probabilistic label relaxation to be more consistent with the spatial context. With this optimal graph and reliable label probability set, the final labels are computed by graph-structured regularization. We demonstrate the contextual label-smoothing approach on two separate urban airborne LiDAR datasets with complex urban scenes. Significant improvements in the classification accuracies are achieved without losing small objects (such as facades and cars). The overall accuracy is increased by 7.01% on the Vienna dataset and 6.88% on the Vaihingen dataset. Moreover, most large, wrongly labeled regions are corrected by long-range interactions that are derived from the optimal graph, and misclassified regions that lack neighborhood communications in terms of correct labels are also corrected with the probabilistic label relaxation.