# Neural Implicit Surface Reconstruction using Imaging Sonar

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.08221 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.08221/

## Key facts

- Cited by 19 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 11 of its 51 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 17 Sep 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [NeuS: Learning Neural Implicit Surfaces by Volume Rendering for Multi-view Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10689/) (2021)
- [Block-NeRF: Scalable Large Scene Neural View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05263/) (2022)
- [Implicit Geometric Regularization for Learning Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.10099/) (2020)
- [ReLU Fields: The Little Non-linearity That Could](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.10824/) (2022)
- [Non-line-of-Sight Imaging via Neural Transient Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.00373/) (2021)
- [Fusing Concurrent Orthogonal Wide-aperture Sonar Images for Dense Underwater 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.10407/) (2020)
- [An unbiased ray-marching transmittance estimator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.10294/) (2021)
- [Spatial Acoustic Projection for 3D Imaging Sonar Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.02840/) (2022)
- [Robust Model-Aided Inertial Localization for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.08011/) (2018)
- [Predictive 3D Sonar Mapping of Underwater Environments via Object-specific Bayesian Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.03203/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [Neural LiDAR Fields for Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.01643/) (2023)
- [DART: Implicit Doppler Tomography for Radar Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03896/) (2024)
- [Radar Fields: Frequency-Space Neural Scene Representations for FMCW Radar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.04662/) (2024)
- [Z-Splat: Z-Axis Gaussian Splatting for Camera-Sonar Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.04687/) (2024)
- [Neural Volumetric Reconstruction for Coherent Synthetic Aperture Sonar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.09909/) (2023)
- [RadarSplat: Radar Gaussian Splatting for High-Fidelity Data Synthesis and 3D Reconstruction of Autonomous Driving Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.01379/) (2025)
- [AONeuS: A Neural Rendering Framework for Acoustic-Optical Sensor Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03309/) (2024)
- [SonarSplat: Novel View Synthesis of Imaging Sonar via Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.00159/) (2025)
- [Acoustic Neural 3D Reconstruction Under Pose Drift](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.08930/) (2025)
- [CrossModalityDiffusion: Multi-Modal Novel View Synthesis with Unified Intermediate Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.09838/) (2025)
- [RadarSim: Simulating Single-Chip Radar via Multimodal Neural Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.26328/) (2026)
- [SH-SAS: An Implicit Neural Representation for Complex Spherical-Harmonic Scattering Fields for 3D Synthetic Aperture Sonar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.11087/) (2025)
- [NAS-GS: Noise-Aware Sonar Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.06285/) (2026)
- [TouchAnything: Diffusion-Guided 3D Reconstruction from Sparse Robot Touches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.08945/) (2026)
- [Motion Degeneracy in Self-supervised Learning of Elevation Angle Estimation for 2D Forward-Looking Sonar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.16160/) (2023)
- [VAIR: Visuo-Acoustic Implicit Representations for Low-Cost, Multi-Modal Transparent Surface Reconstruction in Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.04963/) (2024)
- [Single View Seafloor Recovery from Imaging Sonar via Differentiable Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.24195/) (2026)
- [Neural Radiated-Noise Fields for Unmanned Underwater Vehicle Noise Spectrum Prediction in Three-Dimensional Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.04008/) (2026)
- [Adapting Vision Foundation Models to Acoustics for Pose-Free 3D Sonar Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.06261/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present a technique for dense 3D reconstruction of objects using an imaging sonar, also known as forward-looking sonar (FLS). Compared to previous methods that model the scene geometry as point clouds or volumetric grids, we represent the geometry as a neural implicit function. Additionally, given such a representation, we use a differentiable volumetric renderer that models the propagation of acoustic waves to synthesize imaging sonar measurements. We perform experiments on real and synthetic datasets and show that our algorithm reconstructs high-fidelity surface geometry from multi-view FLS images at much higher quality than was possible with previous techniques and without suffering from their associated memory overhead.