A Lightweight Leddar Optical Fusion Scanning System (FSS) for Canopy Foliage Monitoring

A growing need for sampling environmental spaces in high detail is driving the rapid development of non-destructive three-dimensional (3D) sensing technologies. LiDAR sensors, capable of precise 3D measurement at various scales from indoor to landscape, still lack affordable and portable products for broad-scale and multi-temporal monitoring. This study aims to configure a compact and low-cost 3D fusion scanning system (FSS) with a multi-segment Leddar (light emitting diode detection and ranging, LeddarTech), a monocular camera, and rotational robotics to recover hemispherical, colored point clouds. This includes an entire framework of calibration and fusion algorithms utilizing Leddar depth measurements and image parallax information. The FSS was applied to scan a cottonwood (Populus spp.) stand repeatedly during autumnal leaf drop. Results show that the calibration error based on bundle adjustment is between 1 and 3 pixels. The FSS scans exhibit a similar canopy volume profile to the benchmarking terrestrial laser scans, with an r² between 0.5 and 0.7 in varying stages of leaf cover. The 3D point distribution information from FSS also provides a valuable correction factor for the leaf area index (LAI) estimation. The consistency of corrected LAI measurement demonstrates the practical value of deploying FSS for canopy foliage monitoring.