Abstract:Self-supervised monocular depth estimation (MDE) has received increasing interests in the last few years. The objects in the scene, including the object size and relationship among different objects, are the main clues to extract the scene structure. However, previous works lack the explicit handling of the changing sizes of the object due to the change of its depth. Especially in a monocular video, the size of the same object is continuously changed, resulting in size and depth ambiguity. To address this problem, we propose a Depth-converted-Scale Convolution (DcSConv) enhanced monocular depth estimation framework, by incorporating the prior relationship between the object depth and object scale to extract features from appropriate scales of the convolution receptive field. The proposed DcSConv focuses on the adaptive scale of the convolution filter instead of the local deformation of its shape. It establishes that the scale of the convolution filter matters no less (or even more in the evaluated task) than its local deformation. Moreover, a Depth-converted-Scale aware Fusion (DcS-F) is developed to adaptively fuse the DcSConv features and the conventional convolution features. Our DcSConv enhanced monocular depth estimation framework can be applied on top of existing CNN based methods as a plug-and-play module to enhance the conventional convolution block. Extensive experiments with different baselines have been conducted on the KITTI benchmark and our method achieves the best results with an improvement up to 11.6% in terms of SqRel reduction. Ablation study also validates the effectiveness of each proposed module.
Abstract:Monocular depth estimation (MDE) has attracted increasing interest in the past few years, owing to its important role in 3D vision. MDE is the estimation of a depth map from a monocular image/video to represent the 3D structure of a scene, which is a highly ill-posed problem. To solve this problem, in this paper, we propose a LiftFormer based on lifting theory topology, for constructing an intermediate subspace that bridges the image color features and depth values, and a subspace that enhances the depth prediction around edges. MDE is formulated by transforming the depth value prediction problem into depth-oriented geometric representation (DGR) subspace feature representation, thus bridging the learning from color values to geometric depth values. A DGR subspace is constructed based on frame theory by using linearly dependent vectors in accordance with depth bins to provide a redundant and robust representation. The image spatial features are transformed into the DGR subspace, where these features correspond directly to the depth values. Moreover, considering that edges usually present sharp changes in a depth map and tend to be erroneously predicted, an edge-aware representation (ER) subspace is constructed, where depth features are transformed and further used to enhance the local features around edges. The experimental results demonstrate that our LiftFormer achieves state-of-the-art performance on widely used datasets, and an ablation study validates the effectiveness of both proposed lifting modules in our LiftFormer.
Abstract:With the great success of diffusion models in image generation, diffusion-based image compression is attracting increasing interests. However, due to the random noise introduced in the diffusion learning, they usually produce reconstructions with deviation from the original images, leading to suboptimal compression results. To address this problem, in this paper, we propose a Noise Constrained Diffusion (NC-Diffusion) framework for high fidelity image compression. Unlike existing diffusion-based compression methods that add random Gaussian noise and direct the noise into the image space, the proposed NC-Diffusion formulates the quantization noise originally added in the learned image compression as the noise in the forward process of diffusion. Then a noise constrained diffusion process is constructed from the ground-truth image to the initial compression result generated with quantization noise. The NC-Diffusion overcomes the problem of noise mismatch between compression and diffusion, significantly improving the inference efficiency. In addition, an adaptive frequency-domain filtering module is developed to enhance the skip connections in the U-Net based diffusion architecture, in order to enhance high-frequency details. Moreover, a zero-shot sample-guided enhancement method is designed to further improve the fidelity of the image. Experiments on multiple benchmark datasets demonstrate that our method can achieve the best performance compared with existing methods.
Abstract:Implicit Neural Video Representation (INVR) has emerged as a novel approach for video representation and compression, using learnable grids and neural networks. Existing methods focus on developing new grid structures efficient for latent representation and neural network architectures with large representation capability, lacking the study on their roles in video representation. In this paper, the difference between INVR based on neural network and INVR based on grid is first investigated from the perspective of video information composition to specify their own advantages, i.e., neural network for general structure while grid for specific detail. Accordingly, an INVR based on mixed neural network and residual grid framework is proposed, where the neural network is used to represent the regular and structured information and the residual grid is used to represent the remaining irregular information in a video. A Coupled WarpRNN-based multi-scale motion representation and compensation module is specifically designed to explicitly represent the regular and structured information, thus terming our method as CWRNN-INVR. For the irregular information, a mixed residual grid is learned where the irregular appearance and motion information are represented together. The mixed residual grid can be combined with the coupled WarpRNN in a way that allows for network reuse. Experiments show that our method achieves the best reconstruction results compared with the existing methods, with an average PSNR of 33.73 dB on the UVG dataset under the 3M model and outperforms existing INVR methods in other downstream tasks. The code can be found at https://github.com/yiyang-sdu/CWRNN-INVR.git}{https://github.com/yiyang-sdu/CWRNN-INVR.git.
Abstract:Reliable transmission of 3D point clouds over wireless channels is challenging due to time-varying signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and limited bandwidth. This paper introduces sensitivity-aware filtering and transmission (SAFT), a learned transmission framework that integrates a Point-BERT-inspired encoder, a sensitivity-guided token filtering (STF) unit, a quantization block, and an SNR-aware decoder for adaptive reconstruction. Specifically, the STF module assigns token-wise importance scores based on the reconstruction sensitivity of each token under channel perturbation. We further employ a training-only symbol-usage penalty to stabilize the discrete representation, without affecting the transmitted payload. Experiments on ShapeNet, ModelNet40, and 8iVFB show that SAFT improves geometric fidelity (D1/D2 PSNR) compared with a separate source--channel coding pipeline (G-PCC combined with LDPC and QAM) and existing learned baselines, with the largest gains observed in low-SNR regimes, highlighting improved robustness under limited bandwidth.
Abstract:Existing post-decoding quality enhancement methods for point clouds are designed for static data and typically process each frame independently. As a result, they cannot effectively exploit the spatiotemporal correlations present in point cloud sequences.We propose a unified geometry and attribute enhancement framework (DUGAE) for G-PCC compressed dynamic point clouds that explicitly exploits inter-frame spatiotemporal correlations in both geometry and attributes. First, a dynamic geometry enhancement network (DGE-Net) based on sparse convolution (SPConv) and feature-domain geometry motion compensation (GMC) aligns and aggregates spatiotemporal information. Then, a detail-aware k-nearest neighbors (DA-KNN) recoloring module maps the original attributes onto the enhanced geometry at the encoder side, improving mapping completeness and preserving attribute details. Finally, a dynamic attribute enhancement network (DAE-Net) with dedicated temporal feature extraction and feature-domain attribute motion compensation (AMC) refines attributes by modeling complex spatiotemporal correlations. On seven dynamic point clouds from the 8iVFB v2, Owlii, and MVUB datasets, DUGAE significantly enhanced the performance of the latest G-PCC geometry-based solid content test model (GeS-TM v10). For geometry (D1), it achieved an average BD-PSNR gain of 11.03 dB and a 93.95% BD-bitrate reduction. For the luma component, it achieved a 4.23 dB BD-PSNR gain with a 66.61% BD-bitrate reduction. DUGAE also improved perceptual quality (as measured by PCQM) and outperformed V-PCC. Our source code will be released on GitHub at: https://github.com/yuanhui0325/DUGAE
Abstract:Point cloud compression often introduces noticeable reconstruction artifacts, which makes quality enhancement necessary. Existing approaches typically assume prior knowledge of the distortion level and train multiple models with identical architectures, each designed for a specific distortion setting. This significantly limits their practical applicability in scenarios where the distortion level is unknown and computational resources are limited. To overcome these limitations, we propose the first blind quality enhancement (BQE) model for compressed dynamic point clouds. BQE enhances compressed point clouds under unknown distortion levels by exploiting temporal dependencies and jointly modeling feature similarity and differences across multiple distortion levels. It consists of a joint progressive feature extraction branch and an adaptive feature fusion branch. In the joint progressive feature extraction branch, consecutive reconstructed frames are first fed into a recoloring-based motion compensation module to generate temporally aligned virtual reference frames. These frames are then fused by a temporal correlation-guided cross-attention module and processed by a progressive feature extraction module to obtain hierarchical features at different distortion levels. In the adaptive feature fusion branch, the current reconstructed frame is input to a quality estimation module to predict a weighting distribution that guides the adaptive weighted fusion of these hierarchical features. When applied to the latest geometry-based point cloud compression (G-PCC) reference software, i.e., test model category13 version 28, BQE achieved average PSNR improvements of 0.535 dB, 0.403 dB, and 0.453 dB, with BD-rates of -17.4%, -20.5%, and -20.1% for the Luma, Cb, and Cr components, respectively.
Abstract:Cloud-edge collaboration enhances machine perception by combining the strengths of edge and cloud computing. Edge devices capture raw data (e.g., 3D point clouds) and extract salient features, which are sent to the cloud for deeper analysis and data fusion. However, efficiently and reliably transmitting features between cloud and edge devices remains a challenging problem. We focus on point cloud-based object detection and propose a task-driven point cloud compression and reliable transmission framework based on source and channel coding. To meet the low-latency and low-power requirements of edge devices, we design a lightweight yet effective feature compaction module that compresses the deepest feature among multi-scale representations by removing task-irrelevant regions and applying channel-wise dimensionality reduction to task-relevant areas. Then, a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)-adaptive channel encoder dynamically encodes the attribute information of the compacted features, while a Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) encoder ensures reliable transmission of geometric information. At the cloud side, an SNR-adaptive channel decoder guides the decoding of attribute information, and the LDPC decoder corrects geometry errors. Finally, a feature decompaction module restores the channel-wise dimensionality, and a diffusion-based feature upsampling module reconstructs shallow-layer features, enabling multi-scale feature reconstruction. On the KITTI dataset, our method achieved a 172-fold reduction in feature size with 3D average precision scores of 93.17%, 86.96%, and 77.25% for easy, moderate, and hard objects, respectively, over a 0 dB SNR wireless channel. Our source code will be released on GitHub at: https://github.com/yuanhui0325/T-PCFC.
Abstract:We propose SirenPose, a novel loss function that combines the periodic activation properties of sinusoidal representation networks with geometric priors derived from keypoint structures to improve the accuracy of dynamic 3D scene reconstruction. Existing approaches often struggle to maintain motion modeling accuracy and spatiotemporal consistency in fast moving and multi target scenes. By introducing physics inspired constraint mechanisms, SirenPose enforces coherent keypoint predictions across both spatial and temporal dimensions. We further expand the training dataset to 600,000 annotated instances to support robust learning. Experimental results demonstrate that models trained with SirenPose achieve significant improvements in spatiotemporal consistency metrics compared to prior methods, showing superior performance in handling rapid motion and complex scene changes.
Abstract:Lossy compression of point clouds reduces storage and transmission costs; however, it inevitably leads to irreversible distortion in geometry structure and attribute information. To address these issues, we propose a unified geometry and attribute enhancement (UGAE) framework, which consists of three core components: post-geometry enhancement (PoGE), pre-attribute enhancement (PAE), and post-attribute enhancement (PoAE). In PoGE, a Transformer-based sparse convolutional U-Net is used to reconstruct the geometry structure with high precision by predicting voxel occupancy probabilities. Building on the refined geometry structure, PAE introduces an innovative enhanced geometry-guided recoloring strategy, which uses a detail-aware K-Nearest Neighbors (DA-KNN) method to achieve accurate recoloring and effectively preserve high-frequency details before attribute compression. Finally, at the decoder side, PoAE uses an attribute residual prediction network with a weighted mean squared error (W-MSE) loss to enhance the quality of high-frequency regions while maintaining the fidelity of low-frequency regions. UGAE significantly outperformed existing methods on three benchmark datasets: 8iVFB, Owlii, and MVUB. Compared to the latest G-PCC test model (TMC13v29), UGAE achieved an average BD-PSNR gain of 9.98 dB and 90.98% BD-bitrate savings for geometry under the D1 metric, as well as a 3.67 dB BD-PSNR improvement with 56.88% BD-bitrate savings for attributes on the Y component. Additionally, it improved perceptual quality significantly.