HomeComputer VisionarXiv:2605.29452

Comparative evaluation of photogrammetric reconstruction methods and 3D Gaussian Splatting for road surface roughness analysis

Computer Vision2026-05v1license

Abstract

Image-based 3D reconstruction offers a low-cost alternative to traditional sensor-based techniques for road surface assessment. This study compares four reconstruction pipelines--COLMAP, Meshroom, Metashape, and 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS)--to evaluate their ability to estimate road surface roughness from smartphone imagery. All point clouds were processed in CloudCompare using a consistent workflow involving orientation alignment, segmentation, normal estimation, and roughness computation at neighborhood radiuses of 0.2, 0.4, and 0.6 model units. The results show that COLMAP provides the highest sensitivity to micro-texture, while Meshroom yields balanced reconstructions with moderate roughness variation. Metashape produces the smoothest geometry due to its internal filtering, and 3DGS captures visible irregularities but exhibits higher noise and lower density. The comparison demonstrates that open-source pipelines are viable for relative roughness evaluation, offering a practical approach for low-cost pavement monitoring.

Comments: accepted by RSMIP 2026

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.29452,
  title  = {Comparative evaluation of photogrammetric reconstruction methods and 3D Gaussian Splatting for road surface roughness analysis},
  author = {Marouane Elmegdar and Teng Xiao},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.29452},
  year   = {2026}
}