lacunr
is an R package for calculating 3D lacunarity from voxel data. It is designed to be used with LiDAR point clouds to measure the heterogeneity or âgappinessâ of 3-dimensional structures such as forest stands. It provides fast C++ functions to efficiently convert point cloud data to voxels and calculate lacunarity using different variants of Allain & Cloitreâs well-known gliding-box algorithm.
You can install lacunr
from CRAN with:
install.packages("lacunr")
Or you can install the development version of lacunr
from GitHub with:
# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("ElliottSmeds/lacunr")
Basic Usage
The standard workflow for lacunr
is fairly simple:
voxelize()
bounding_box()
lacunarity()
library(lacunr)
# create a data.frame of simulated point cloud data
pc <- data.frame(X = rnorm(1000, 10), Y = rnorm(1000, 50), Z = rnorm(1000, 25))
# convert to voxels of size 0.5
vox <- voxelize(pc, edge_length = c(0.5, 0.5, 0.5))
# generate binary map
box <- bounding_box(vox)
# calculate lacunarity curve
lac_curve <- lacunarity(box)
Interfacing with lidR
The lidr
package offers a robust suite of tools for processing LiDAR data. While lacunr
does not require lidR
as a dependency, it is assumed that most users will be working with point cloud data imported using lidR
, and the package is designed to mesh well with lidR
âs data objects. The following tips will help make combining these packages as seamless as possible.
LAS
objects
Users should take special care when using a lidR
LAS
object as input for the voxelize()
function. Since LAS
is an S4 class, it is important to extract the point cloud data from the LAS
object using @data
, otherwise voxelize()
will throw an error:
library(lidR)
# read in LAS point cloud file
las <- readLAS("<file.las>")
# voxelize the LAS point cloud, taking care to input the correct S4 slot
vox <- voxelize(las@data, edge_length = c(0.5, 0.5, 0.5))
Voxelization using lidR
lidR
offers its own extremely versatile voxelization function, voxel_metrics()
. This provides a useful alternative to voxelize()
, although it is important to note that both functions utilize different algorithms and will not produce identical results (see the following section for more details).
voxel_metrics()
returns a lasmetrics3d
object. lacunr
âs bounding_box()
function can accept this as an input, but it also requires that it contain a column named N
, recording the number of points in each voxel. This column can be generated by voxel_metrics()
using the following:
# read in LAS point cloud file
las <- readLAS("<file.las>")
# voxelize at 1m resolution, creating a column N containing the number of points
vox <- voxel_metrics(las, ~list(N = length(Z)), res = 1)
# convert to array
box <- bounding_box(vox)
Details on voxelize()
vs lidR::voxel_metrics()
voxelize()
is adapted from the function voxels()
, originally written by J. Antonio Guzmán Q. for the package rTLS
. It is intended as a complement rather than a replacement for lidR
âs more elaborate voxel_metrics()
. Each function has a different underlying algorithm and will produce distinct results from the same input data. The chief advantages of voxelize()
over voxel_metrics()
are:
voxel_metrics()
permits at most two dimensions.voxel_metrics()
. This is due to differences in how each function aligns the point cloud data within the voxel grid.RetroSearch is an open source project built by @garambo | Open a GitHub Issue
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