# Adaptive Gating for Single-Photon 3D Imaging

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.15047 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.15047/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 12 of its 53 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 30 Nov 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [Lidar for Autonomous Driving: The principles, challenges, and trends for automotive lidar and perception systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.08467/) (2020)
- [Neural RGB->D Sensing: Depth and Uncertainty from a Video Camera](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.02571/) (2019)
- [Virtual Wave Optics for Non-Line-of-Sight Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.07535/) (2018)
- [A megapixel time-gated SPAD image sensor for 2D and 3D imaging applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.12910/) (2019)
- [Asynchronous Single-Photon 3D Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.06372/) (2019)
- [High Flux Passive Imaging with Single-Photon Sensors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.10190/) (2019)
- [Photon-Flooded Single-Photon 3D Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.08347/) (2019)
- [Generating and Exploiting Probabilistic Monocular Depth Estimates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.05739/) (2019)
- [Passive Inter-Photon Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00059/) (2021)
- [A Computational Model of a Single-Photon Avalanche Diode Sensor for Transient Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.02635/) (2017)
- [Dead Time Compensation for High-Flux Ranging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.11145/) (2018)
- [High Resolution, Deep Imaging Using Confocal Time-of-flight Diffuse Optical Tomography](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.11680/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Count-Free Single-Photon 3D Imaging with Race Logic](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.04924/) (2023)
- [Resolution Limit of Single-Photon LiDAR](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17719/) (2024)
- [Single-Photon 3D Imaging with Equi-Depth Photon Histograms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.16150/) (2024)
- [Photon Inhibition for Energy-Efficient Single-Photon Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.18337/) (2024)
- [3D Reconstruction from Transient Measurements with Time-Resolved Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.09205/) (2025)
- [Learning to Suppress SPAD-based LiDAR Flare](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.03247/) (2026)
- [High-Flux Count-Free Single-Photon 3D Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.18306/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) are growing in popularity for depth sensing tasks. However, SPADs still struggle in the presence of high ambient light due to the effects of pile-up. Conventional techniques leverage fixed or asynchronous gating to minimize pile-up effects, but these gating schemes are all non-adaptive, as they are unable to incorporate factors such as scene priors and previous photon detections into their gating strategy. We propose an adaptive gating scheme built upon Thompson sampling. Adaptive gating periodically updates the gate position based on prior photon observations in order to minimize depth errors. Our experiments show that our gating strategy results in significantly reduced depth reconstruction error and acquisition time, even when operating outdoors under strong sunlight conditions.