# SCP: Spherical-Coordinate-based Learned Point Cloud Compression

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.12535 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12535/

## Key facts

- Cited by 12 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 19 of its 34 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 Aug 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [Cylindrical and Asymmetrical 3D Convolution Networks for LiDAR Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.10033/) (2020)
- [DenseFusion: 6D Object Pose Estimation by Iterative Dense Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.04780/) (2019)
- [PVN3D: A Deep Point-wise 3D Keypoints Voting Network for 6DoF Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.04231/) (2019)
- [Checkerboard Context Model for Efficient Learned Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.15306/) (2021)
- [FFB6D: A Full Flow Bidirectional Fusion Network for 6D Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.02242/) (2021)
- [Deep Learning for LiDAR Point Clouds in Autonomous Driving: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.09830/) (2020)
- [Point Cloud Upsampling via Disentangled Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.04779/) (2021)
- [OctSqueeze: Octree-Structured Entropy Model for LiDAR Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.07178/) (2020)
- [Sparse Tensor-based Multiscale Representation for Point Cloud Geometry Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.10633/) (2021)
- [VoxelContext-Net: An Octree based Framework for Point Cloud Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.02158/) (2021)
- [OctAttention: Octree-Based Large-Scale Contexts Model for Point Cloud Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.06028/) (2022)
- [Learning Convolutional Transforms for Lossy Point Cloud Geometry Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.08548/) (2019)
- [MuSCLE: Multi Sweep Compression of LiDAR using Deep Entropy Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.07590/) (2020)
- [Learning-based lossless compression of 3D point cloud geometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.14700/) (2020)
- [Deep Point Cloud Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11704/) (2021)
- [Point Cloud Compression with Sibling Context and Surface Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.00760/) (2022)
- [Cylindrical coordinates for LiDAR point cloud compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.11237/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [RENO: Real-Time Neural Compression for 3D LiDAR Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12382/) (2025)
- [Voxel-based Point Cloud Geometry Compression with Space-to-Channel Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.18283/) (2025)
- [PointCompress3D: A Point Cloud Compression Framework for Roadside LiDARs in Intelligent Transportation Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.01750/) (2024)
- [Re-Densification Meets Cross-Scale Propagation: Real-Time Neural Compression of LiDAR Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.20466/) (2025)
- [Point Cloud Compression and Objective Quality Assessment: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.22902/) (2025)
- [AnyPcc: Compressing Any Point Cloud with a Single Universal Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.20331/) (2025)
- [Towards Practical Lossless Neural Compression for LiDAR Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.25260/) (2026)
- [Compression of Large-Scale 3D Point Clouds Based on Joint Optimization of Point Sampling and Feature Extraction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.07302/) (2024)
- [Rate-distortion Optimized Point Cloud Preprocessing for Geometry-based Point Cloud Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.01633/) (2025)
- [SurfelSoup: Learned Point Cloud Geometry Compression With a Probablistic SurfelTree Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.00186/) (2026)
- [PACE: Post-Causal Entropy Modeling for Learned LiDAR Point Cloud Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.01320/) (2026)
- [Inter-LPCM: Learning-based Inter-Frame Predictive Coding for LiDAR Point Cloud Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.18006/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In recent years, the task of learned point cloud compression has gained prominence. An important type of point cloud, the spinning LiDAR point cloud, is generated by spinning LiDAR on vehicles. This process results in numerous circular shapes and azimuthal angle invariance features within the point clouds. However, these two features have been largely overlooked by previous methodologies. In this paper, we introduce a model-agnostic method called Spherical-Coordinate-based learned Point cloud compression (SCP), designed to leverage the aforementioned features fully. Additionally, we propose a multi-level Octree for SCP to mitigate the reconstruction error for distant areas within the Spherical-coordinate-based Octree. SCP exhibits excellent universality, making it applicable to various learned point cloud compression techniques. Experimental results demonstrate that SCP surpasses previous state-of-the-art methods by up to 29.14% in point-to-point PSNR BD-Rate.