Quality assessment of image matchers for DSM generation -- a comparative study based on UAV images

Recently developed automatic dense image matching algorithms are now being implemented for DSM/DTM production, with their pixel-level surface generation capability offering the prospect of partially alleviating the need for manual and semi-automatic stereoscopic measurements. In this paper, five commercial/public software packages for 3D surface generation are evaluated, using 5cm GSD imagery recorded from a UAV. Generated surface models are assessed against point clouds generated from mobile LiDAR and manual stereoscopic measurements. The software packages considered are APS, MICMAC, SURE, Pix4UAV and an SGM implementation from DLR.