# Unveiling Ancient Maya Settlements Using Aerial LiDAR Image Segmentation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.05773 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05773/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 5 of its 22 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Mar 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Rethinking Atrous Convolution for Semantic Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.05587/) (2017)
- [Deep High-Resolution Representation Learning for Visual Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.07919/) (2019)
- [CSPNet: A New Backbone that can Enhance Learning Capability of CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11929/) (2019)
- [Discover the Mysteries of the Maya: Selected Contributions from the Machine Learning Challenge & The Discovery Challenge Workshop at ECML PKDD 2021](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.03163/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Archaeoscape: Bringing Aerial Laser Scanning Archaeology to the Deep Learning Era](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.05203/) (2024)
- [Needles in the Landscape: Semi-Supervised Pseudolabeling for Archaeological Site Discovery under Label Scarcity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.16814/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Manual identification of archaeological features in LiDAR imagery is labor-intensive, costly, and requires archaeological expertise. This paper shows how recent advancements in deep learning (DL) present efficient solutions for accurately segmenting archaeological structures in aerial LiDAR images using the YOLOv8 neural network. The proposed approach uses novel pre-processing of the raw LiDAR data and dataset augmentation methods to produce trained YOLOv8 networks to improve accuracy, precision, and recall for the segmentation of two important Maya structure types: annular structures and platforms. The results show an IoU performance of 0.842 for platforms and 0.809 for annular structures which outperform existing approaches. Further, analysis via domain experts considers the topological consistency of segmented regions and performance vs. area providing important insights. The approach automates time-consuming LiDAR image labeling which significantly accelerates accurate analysis of historical landscapes.