Automatic Generation of Horizontal Building Mask Images by Using a 3D Model with Aerial Photographs for Deep Learning

Information extracted from aerial photographs is widely used in urban planning and design. An effective method for detecting buildings in aerial photographs is to use deep learning for understanding the current state of a target region. However, the building mask images used to train the deep learning model are manually generated in many cases. To solve this challenge, a method has been proposed for automatically generating mask images by using virtual reality 3D models for deep learning. Because normal virtual models do not have the realism of a photograph, it is difficult to obtain highly accurate detection results in the real world even if the images are used for deep learning training. Therefore, the objective of this research is to propose a method for automatically generating building mask images by using 3D models with textured aerial photographs for deep learning. The model trained on datasets generated by the proposed method could detect buildings in aerial photographs with an accuracy of IoU = 0.622. Work left for the future includes changing the size and type of mask images, training the model, and evaluating the accuracy of the trained model.