A Method for the 3D Reconstruction of Landscape Trees in the Leafless Stage

Three-dimensional models of trees can help simulate forest resource management, field surveys, and urban landscape design. With the advancement of Computer Vision (CV) and laser remote sensing technology, forestry researchers can use images and point cloud data to perform digital modeling. However, modeling leafless tree models that conform to tree growth rules and have effective branching remains a major challenge. This article proposes a method based on 3D Gaussian Splatting (3D GS) to address this issue. Firstly, we compared the reconstruction of the same tree and confirmed the advantages of the 3D GS method in tree 3D reconstruction. Secondly, seven landscape trees were reconstructed using the 3D GS-based method, to verify the effectiveness of the method. Finally, the 3D reconstructed point cloud was used to generate the QSM and extract tree feature parameters to verify the accuracy of the reconstructed model. Our results indicate that this method can effectively reconstruct the structure of real trees, and especially completely reconstruct 3rd-order branches. Meanwhile, the error of the Diameter at Breast Height (DBH) of the model is below 1.59 cm, with a relative error of 3.8–14.6%. This proves that 3D GS effectively solved the problems of inconsistency between tree models and real growth rules, as well as poor branch structure in tree reconstruction models, providing new insights and research directions for the 3D reconstruction and visualization of landscape trees in the leafless stage.