# SparseSat-NeRF: Dense Depth Supervised Neural Radiance Fields for Sparse Satellite Images

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.00277 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.00277/

## Key facts

- Cited by 18 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 15 of its 28 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Sep 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [pixelNeRF: Neural Radiance Fields from One or Few Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02190/) (2020)
- [MVSNeRF: Fast Generalizable Radiance Field Reconstruction from Multi-View Stereo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.15595/) (2021)
- [Depth-supervised NeRF: Fewer Views and Faster Training for Free](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.02791/) (2021)
- [Pyramid Stereo Matching Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.08669/) (2018)
- [Putting NeRF on a Diet: Semantically Consistent Few-Shot View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00677/) (2021)
- [Dense Depth Priors for Neural Radiance Fields from Sparse Input Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03288/) (2021)
- [DeepMVS: Learning Multi-view Stereopsis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.00650/) (2018)
- [NerfingMVS: Guided Optimization of Neural Radiance Fields for Indoor Multi-view Stereo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.01129/) (2021)
- [SinNeRF: Training Neural Radiance Fields on Complex Scenes from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.00928/) (2022)
- [Sat-NeRF: Learning Multi-View Satellite Photogrammetry With Transient Objects and Shadow Modeling Using RPC Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.08896/) (2022)
- [Shadow Neural Radiance Fields for Multi-view Satellite Photogrammetry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.09877/) (2021)
- [Learned Multi-Patch Similarity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.08836/) (2017)
- [Rational Polynomial Camera Model Warping for Deep Learning Based Satellite Multi-View Stereo Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.11121/) (2021)
- [Late or Earlier Information Fusion from Depth and Spectral Data? Large-Scale Digital Surface Model Refinement by Hybrid-cGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.09935/) (2019)
- [ResDepth: Learned Residual Stereo Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.08026/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 18 of 18)

- [Skyfall-GS: Synthesizing Immersive 3D Urban Scenes from Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.15869/) (2025)
- [SAT-NGP : Unleashing Neural Graphics Primitives for Fast Relightable Transient-Free 3D reconstruction from Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.18711/) (2024)
- [Radar Fields: An Extension of Radiance Fields to SAR](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.12961/) (2023)
- [Sat-DN: Implicit Surface Reconstruction from Multi-View Satellite Images with Depth and Normal Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.08352/) (2025)
- [FusionRF: High-Fidelity Satellite Neural Radiance Fields from Multispectral and Panchromatic Acquisitions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.15132/) (2024)
- [S-EO: A Large-Scale Dataset for Geometry-Aware Shadow Detection in Remote Sensing Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.06920/) (2025)
- [From Orbit to Ground: Generative City Photogrammetry from Extreme Off-Nadir Satellite Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.07527/) (2025)
- [Sparse-View 3D Reconstruction: Recent Advances and Open Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.16406/) (2025)
- [Diachronic Stereo Matching for Multi-Date Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.22808/) (2026)
- [EOGS++: Earth Observation Gaussian Splatting with Internal Camera Refinement and Direct Panchromatic Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.16542/) (2025)
- [ShadowGS: Shadow-Aware 3D Gaussian Splatting for Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.00939/) (2026)
- [SatSurfGS: Generalizable 2D Gaussian Splatting for Sparse-View Satellite Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.07181/) (2026)
- [BRDF-NeRF: Neural Radiance Fields with Optical Satellite Images and BRDF Modelling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.12014/) (2024)
- [Tile and Slide : A New Framework for Scaling NeRF from Local to Global 3D Earth Observation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.01631/) (2025)
- [Gaussian Entropy Fields: Driving Adaptive Sparsity in 3D Gaussian Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.04542/) (2025)
- [Delta-NeRF: Incremental Refinement of Neural Radiance Fields through Residual Control and Knowledge Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.20804/) (2025)
- [Fast and Generalizable NeRF Architecture Selection for Satellite Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.18306/) (2026)
- [SeasonStereo: Robust Dense Stereo Matching for Multi-Date Satellite Imagery via Generative AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.27139/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Digital surface model generation using traditional multi-view stereo matching (MVS) performs poorly over non-Lambertian surfaces, with asynchronous acquisitions, or at discontinuities. Neural radiance fields (NeRF) offer a new paradigm for reconstructing surface geometries using continuous volumetric representation. NeRF is self-supervised, does not require ground truth geometry for training, and provides an elegant way to include in its representation physical parameters about the scene, thus potentially remedying the challenging scenarios where MVS fails. However, NeRF and its variants require many views to produce convincing scene's geometries which in earth observation satellite imaging is rare. In this paper we present SparseSat-NeRF (SpS-NeRF) - an extension of Sat-NeRF adapted to sparse satellite views. SpS-NeRF employs dense depth supervision guided by crosscorrelation similarity metric provided by traditional semi-global MVS matching. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on stereo and tri-stereo Pleiades 1B/WorldView-3 images, and compare against NeRF and Sat-NeRF. The code is available at https://github.com/LulinZhang/SpS-NeRF