Impact of LiDAR visualisations on semantic segmentation of archaeological objects

Abstract: Deep learning methods in LiDAR-based archaeological research often leverage visualisation techniques derived from Digital Elevation Models to enhance characteristics of archaeological objects present in the images. This paper investigates the impact of visualisations on deep learning performance through a comprehensive testing framework. The study involves the use of eight semantic segmentation models to evaluate seven diverse visualisations across two study areas, encompassing five archaeological classes. Experimental results reveal that the choice of appropriate visualisations can influence performance by up to 8%. Yet, pinpointing one visualisation that outperforms the others in segmenting all archaeological classes proves challenging. The observed performance variation, reaching up to 25% across different model configurations, underscores the importance of thoughtfully selecting model configurations and LiDAR visualisations for successfully segmenting archaeological objects.