Integrating Gigapixel Panoramas and LiDAR: Increasing Geological Interpreters Power in 3D Color Space

Joseph el-Azzi¹, Reuben Reyes², and Charles Kerans³
¹ Occidental Oil & Gas, Houston, Texas 77081
² Bureau of Economic Geology, Austin, Texas 78758
³ Univesity of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712

Gigapixel size panoramas acquired using camera mounted robots provide very high resolution photographic imagery for visualizing geological features. In addition to collecting photographic imagery, outcrop geological surveys using terrestrial laser scanning systems (TLS) to collect range data and spatially image objects in three dimensional space has become common. Using a coupled collinear and rigid setup both range and luminance data are collected simultaneously at an accurately measured sensor location. Co-registration errors associated with the coupled setup are minimized using a least squares fitting method and may be achieved with just three tie points. The resulting combined data set allows the interpreter to locate and extract meaningful geometrical measurements from the high resolution photo-draped digital outcrop model (DOM). In the case presented in this paper more than 150 pixels were texture mapped in an area bounded by four range points spanning an area of about 3.5cm². Results show that integrating these systems to create true color surface models significantly increase the number of measurable geological features as compared to solely using point cloud data, a color textured point cloud or a standard megapixel panorama draped on a surface model.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90158©2012 GCAGS and GC-SEPM 6nd Annual Convention, Austin, Texas, 21-24 October 2012