# Learning Depth Estimation for Transparent and Mirror Surfaces

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.15052 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15052/

## Key facts

- Cited by 34 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 54 of its 72 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Jul 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 54)

- [Vision Transformers for Dense Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13413/) (2021)
- [Towards Robust Monocular Depth Estimation: Mixing Datasets for Zero-shot Cross-dataset Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.01341/) (2019)
- [A Large Dataset to Train Convolutional Networks for Disparity, Optical Flow, and Scene Flow Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.02134/) (2015)
- [Unsupervised Monocular Depth Estimation with Left-Right Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.03677/) (2016)
- [Unsupervised Learning of Depth and Ego-Motion from Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.07813/) (2017)
- [AdaBins: Depth Estimation using Adaptive Bins](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.14141/) (2020)
- [Pyramid Stereo Matching Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.08669/) (2018)
- [3D Packing for Self-Supervised Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02693/) (2019)
- [Unsupervised CNN for Single View Depth Estimation: Geometry to the Rescue](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.04992/) (2016)
- [End-to-End Learning of Geometry and Context for Deep Stereo Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.04309/) (2017)
- [RAFT-Stereo: Multilevel Recurrent Field Transforms for Stereo Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.07547/) (2021)
- [GeoNet: Unsupervised Learning of Dense Depth, Optical Flow and Camera Pose](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.02276/) (2018)
- [GA-Net: Guided Aggregation Net for End-to-end Stereo Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.06587/) (2019)
- [Group-wise Correlation Stereo Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.04025/) (2019)
- [D3VO: Deep Depth, Deep Pose and Deep Uncertainty for Monocular Visual Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.01060/) (2020)
- [Practical Stereo Matching via Cascaded Recurrent Network with Adaptive Correlation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11483/) (2022)
- [Revisiting Stereo Depth Estimation From a Sequence-to-Sequence Perspective with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.02910/) (2020)
- [On the uncertainty of self-supervised monocular depth estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.06209/) (2020)
- [Unsupervised Learning of Depth and Ego-Motion from Monocular Video Using 3D Geometric Constraints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.05522/) (2018)
- [Hierarchical Neural Architecture Search for Deep Stereo Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.13501/) (2020)
- [Unsupervised Learning of Monocular Depth Estimation and Visual Odometry with Deep Feature Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.03893/) (2018)
- [CFNet: Cascade and Fused Cost Volume for Robust Stereo Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.04314/) (2021)
- [Stereo Matching by Training a Convolutional Neural Network to Compare Image Patches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1510.05970/) (2015)
- [Feature-metric Loss for Self-supervised Learning of Depth and Egomotion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.10603/) (2020)
- [Learning Depth with Convolutional Spatial Propagation Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.02695/) (2018)
- [MonoViT: Self-Supervised Monocular Depth Estimation with a Vision Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.03543/) (2022)
- [Self-Supervised Monocular Depth Hints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.09051/) (2019)
- [Hierarchical Deep Stereo Matching on High-resolution Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.06704/) (2019)
- [ClearGrasp: 3D Shape Estimation of Transparent Objects for Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.02550/) (2019)
- [HITNet: Hierarchical Iterative Tile Refinement Network for Real-time Stereo Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.12140/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 34)

- [Depth Anything V2](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09414/) (2024)
- [UniDepthV2: Universal Monocular Metric Depth Estimation Made Simpler](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.20110/) (2025)
- [Stereo Anywhere: Robust Zero-Shot Deep Stereo Matching Even Where Either Stereo or Mono Fail](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04472/) (2024)
- [Diffusion Models for Monocular Depth Estimation: Overcoming Challenging Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.16698/) (2024)
- [Reversible Decoupling Network for Single Image Reflection Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08063/) (2024)
- [Mirror-3DGS: Incorporating Mirror Reflections into 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01168/) (2024)
- [Robust Synthetic-to-Real Transfer for Stereo Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07705/) (2024)
- [The Third Monocular Depth Estimation Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16831/) (2024)
- [Diffusion Knows Transparency: Repurposing Video Diffusion for Transparent Object Depth and Normal Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.23705/) (2025)
- [Towards Robust Monocular Depth Estimation in Non-Lambertian Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.06083/) (2024)
- [Diffusion-Based Depth Inpainting for Transparent and Reflective Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08567/) (2024)
- [Seeing and Seeing Through the Glass: Real and Synthetic Data for Multi-Layer Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11633/) (2025)
- [The Fourth Monocular Depth Estimation Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.17787/) (2025)
- [Rectifying Latent Space for Generative Single-Image Reflection Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.06358/) (2025)
- [Multi-Label Stereo Matching for Transparent Scene Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.14008/) (2025)
- [NTIRE 2025 Challenge on HR Depth from Images of Specular and Transparent Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.05815/) (2025)
- [DepthFocus: Controllable Depth Estimation for See-Through Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.16993/) (2025)
- [SeeClear: Reliable Transparent Object Depth Estimation via Generative Opacification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.19547/) (2026)
- [Multi-Modality Driven LoRA for Adverse Condition Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.20162/) (2024)
- [Real-Time Glass Detection and Reprojection using Sensor Fusion Onboard Aerial Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.06518/) (2025)
- [EGSA-PT:Edge-Guided Spatial Attention with Progressive Training for Monocular Depth Estimation and Segmentation of Transparent Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.14970/) (2025)
- [GeomPrompt: Geometric Prompt Learning for RGB-D Semantic Segmentation Under Missing and Degraded Depth](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.11585/) (2026)
- [OptiGeo: Efficient Monocular Geometry for Embodied Perception in Optically Challenging Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.29881/) (2026)
- [Shape2.5D: A Dataset of Texture-less Surfaces for Depth and Normals Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.15831/) (2024)
- [A Practical Approach to Underwater Depth and Surface Normals Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.02072/) (2024)
- [Intrinsic Image Decomposition for Robust Self-supervised Monocular Depth Estimation on Reflective Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.22209/) (2025)
- [HTMNet: A Hybrid Network with Transformer-Mamba Bottleneck Multimodal Fusion for Transparent and Reflective Objects Depth Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20904/) (2025)
- [Stextsuperscript2Mtextsuperscript2: Scalable Stereo Matching Model for Reliable Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.13229/) (2025)
- [BRIDGE -- Building Reinforcement-Learning Depth-to-Image Data Generation Engine for Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.25077/) (2025)
- [The 3D Mirage: Probing and Taming 3D Hallucinations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.15423/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Inferring the depth of transparent or mirror (ToM) surfaces represents a hard challenge for either sensors, algorithms, or deep networks. We propose a simple pipeline for learning to estimate depth properly for such surfaces with neural networks, without requiring any ground-truth annotation. We unveil how to obtain reliable pseudo labels by in-painting ToM objects in images and processing them with a monocular depth estimation model. These labels can be used to fine-tune existing monocular or stereo networks, to let them learn how to deal with ToM surfaces. Experimental results on the Booster dataset show the dramatic improvements enabled by our remarkably simple proposal.