How to determine individual changes in x,y,z coordinates between two point clouds

[RSGlaciers]

Hi Daniel,

I would like to kindly ask for your help.

I have two point clouds that were recorded within an hour of each other. I need to calculate the amount of displacement that occurred in the x, y, and z coordinate between the scans. My research question is whether or not the rates of displacement changed significantly at certain time periods between scan 1 to scan 2. How can I use cloud compare to calculate the amount of change in x, y, and z coordinate between point clouds? And is it possible to determine the rates of change in the coordinates? My LiDAR scans are of a glacier - the glacier is a moving target - the movement of the ice is horizontal (surface velocities) in the x,y coordinate, but also vertical ice motion in the z coordinate. I have used the cloud to cloud differencing tool. I can look at C2C differences and split them for x, y, and z coordinates. I am not sure if this is the best tool to use? The tool does not show me the rates of change in displacement. Also, I am not sure if the differencing tool gives an output that shows an overall change in the geometry of a moving object? Rather than showing changes that acted on individual coordinates?

I would be very grateful for any help you can offer.

Thank you so much Cloud Compare community. The software is awesome

[daniel]

Oups, it seems that I have totally missed this message (sorry, sometimes there are just to many of them :( ).

I guess it's a bit late, but the best tool to do this is to use the M3C2 plugin (http://www.cloudcompare.org/doc/wiki/in ... 2_(plugin)). But you'll probably have to read the associated article to fully understand what you get as output.