# Error Diagnosis of Deep Monocular Depth Estimation Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.05533 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05533/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 17 of its 29 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Nov 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Dropout as a Bayesian Approximation: Representing Model Uncertainty in Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02142/) (2015)
- [Simple and Scalable Predictive Uncertainty Estimation using Deep Ensembles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.01474/) (2016)
- [ScanNet: Richly-annotated 3D Reconstructions of Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.04405/) (2017)
- [What Uncertainties Do We Need in Bayesian Deep Learning for Computer Vision?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.04977/) (2017)
- [Predicting Depth, Surface Normals and Semantic Labels with a Common Multi-Scale Convolutional Architecture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.4734/) (2014)
- [Pseudo-LiDAR from Visual Depth Estimation: Bridging the Gap in 3D Object Detection for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.07179/) (2018)
- [Deeper Depth Prediction with Fully Convolutional Residual Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.00373/) (2016)
- [From Big to Small: Multi-Scale Local Planar Guidance for Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.10326/) (2019)
- [Cross Modal Distillation for Supervision Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1507.00448/) (2015)
- [TIDE: A General Toolbox for Identifying Object Detection Errors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.08115/) (2020)
- [PlaneRCNN: 3D Plane Detection and Reconstruction from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04072/) (2018)
- [Deep Virtual Stereo Odometry: Leveraging Deep Depth Prediction for Monocular Direct Sparse Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.02570/) (2018)
- [Sampling-free Epistemic Uncertainty Estimation Using Approximated Variance Propagation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.00598/) (2019)
- [Visual Odometry Revisited: What Should Be Learnt?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.09803/) (2019)
- [Single-View and Multi-View Depth Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07245/) (2016)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Leveraging a realistic synthetic database to learn Shape-from-Shading for estimating the colon depth in colonoscopy images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.05021/) (2023)
- [StarryGazer: Leveraging Monocular Depth Estimation Models for Domain-Agnostic Single Depth Image Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.13147/) (2025)
- [Look to Locate: Vision-Based Multisensory Navigation with 3-D Digital Maps for GNSS-Challenged Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.19827/) (2025)
- [The 3D Mirage: Probing and Taming 3D Hallucinations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.15423/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Estimating depth from a monocular image is an ill-posed problem: when the camera projects a 3D scene onto a 2D plane, depth information is inherently and permanently lost. Nevertheless, recent work has shown impressive results in estimating 3D structure from 2D images using deep learning. In this paper, we put on an introspective hat and analyze state-of-the-art monocular depth estimation models in indoor scenes to understand these models' limitations and error patterns. To address errors in depth estimation, we introduce a novel Depth Error Detection Network (DEDN) that spatially identifies erroneous depth predictions in the monocular depth estimation models. By experimenting with multiple state-of-the-art monocular indoor depth estimation models on multiple datasets, we show that our proposed depth error detection network can identify a significant number of errors in the predicted depth maps. Our module is flexible and can be readily plugged into any monocular depth prediction network to help diagnose its results. Additionally, we propose a simple yet effective Depth Error Correction Network (DECN) that iteratively corrects errors based on our initial error diagnosis.