Three dimensional deformation measurement method based on image guided point cloud registration

•A novel image guided point cloud registration method is proposed.•3D deformation especially for in-plane movement can be obtained based on point clouds.•Two measurement systems are established to verify the validity and accuracy of the proposed method in indoor and outdoor environment. 3D geometric capturing technologies based on camera and laser scanning have undergone huge advances. However, accurate 3D displacement measurement especially for in-plane movement based on point clouds remain unsolved problems. To deal with this challenge, a novel 3D deformation measurement method based on image guided point cloud registration is proposed. 2D digital image correlation method is adopted to calculate image displacement field and used to search the corresponding point from deformed point clouds. Then, accurate 3D displacement field can be obtained. Experiments have verified that the proposed method can realize accurate 3D displacement measurement at both short and far distance. The precision of 3D displacement measurement is 0.1 mm and 1 mm with structured light system and camera assisted TLS system separately.