# iComMa: Inverting 3D Gaussian Splatting for Camera Pose Estimation via Comparing and Matching

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.09031 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.09031/

## Key facts

- Cited by 13 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 36 of its 42 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 Dec 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 36)

- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Mip-NeRF 360: Unbounded Anti-Aliased Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12077/) (2021)
- [Plenoxels: Radiance Fields without Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05131/) (2021)
- [SuperGlue: Learning Feature Matching with Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11763/) (2019)
- [LoFTR: Detector-Free Local Feature Matching with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00680/) (2021)
- [PoseCNN: A Convolutional Neural Network for 6D Object Pose Estimation in Cluttered Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00199/) (2017)
- [BARF: Bundle-Adjusting Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.06405/) (2021)
- [LightGlue: Local Feature Matching at Light Speed](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.13643/) (2023)
- [NICE-SLAM: Neural Implicit Scalable Encoding for SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.12130/) (2021)
- [From Coarse to Fine: Robust Hierarchical Localization at Large Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03506/) (2018)
- [Point-NeRF: Point-based Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.08845/) (2022)
- [iMAP: Implicit Mapping and Positioning in Real-Time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.12352/) (2021)
- [PVNet: Pixel-wise Voting Network for 6DoF Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.11788/) (2018)
- [INeRF: Inverting Neural Radiance Fields for Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.05877/) (2020)
- [CosyPose: Consistent multi-view multi-object 6D pose estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.08465/) (2020)
- [DeepIM: Deep Iterative Matching for 6D Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.00175/) (2018)
- [NoPe-NeRF: Optimising Neural Radiance Field with No Pose Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.07388/) (2022)
- [Real-Time Seamless Single Shot 6D Object Pose Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.08848/) (2017)
- [MegaPose: 6D Pose Estimation of Novel Objects via Render & Compare](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.06870/) (2022)
- [COTR: Correspondence Transformer for Matching Across Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14167/) (2021)
- [ASpanFormer: Detector-Free Image Matching with Adaptive Span Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.14201/) (2022)
- [OnePose: One-Shot Object Pose Estimation without CAD Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.12257/) (2022)
- [Objectron: A Large Scale Dataset of Object-Centric Videos in the Wild with Pose Annotations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09988/) (2020)
- [MatchFormer: Interleaving Attention in Transformers for Feature Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.09645/) (2022)
- [OnePose++: Keypoint-Free One-Shot Object Pose Estimation without CAD Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.07673/) (2023)
- [Category Level Object Pose Estimation via Neural Analysis-by-Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.08145/) (2020)
- [OSOP: A Multi-Stage One Shot Object Pose Estimation Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.15533/) (2022)
- [NeRF-Pose: A First-Reconstruct-Then-Regress Approach for Weakly-supervised 6D Object Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.04802/) (2022)
- [Zero-Shot Category-Level Object Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03635/) (2022)
- [Single-Stage Keypoint-Based Category-Level Object Pose Estimation from an RGB Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.06161/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [3D Gaussian Splatting: Survey, Technologies, Challenges, and Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17418/) (2024)
- [What Is The Best 3D Scene Representation for Robotics? From Geometric to Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.03422/) (2025)
- [DDGS-CT: Direction-Disentangled Gaussian Splatting for Realistic Volume Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.02518/) (2024)
- [A Guide to Structureless Visual Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.17636/) (2025)
- [GS-LTS: 3D Gaussian Splatting-Based Adaptive Modeling for Long-Term Service Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.17733/) (2025)
- [Digital Twin Generation from Visual Data: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13159/) (2025)
- [3DGS_LSR:Large_Scale Relocation for Autonomous Driving Based on 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.05661/) (2025)
- [Camera Pose Refinement via 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.17876/) (2025)
- [ULF-Loc: Unbiased Landmark Feature for Robust Visual Localization with 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.04730/) (2026)
- [Image Compression Using Novel View Synthesis Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.13862/) (2024)
- [Improving Novel view synthesis of 360^circ Scenes in Extremely Sparse Views by Jointly Training Hemisphere Sampled Synthetic Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.19264/) (2025)
- [SGLoc: Semantic Localization System for Camera Pose Estimation from 3D Gaussian Splatting Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.12027/) (2025)
- [iGaussian: Real-Time Camera Pose Estimation via Feed-Forward 3D Gaussian Splatting Inversion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.14149/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present a method named iComMa to address the 6D camera pose estimation problem in computer vision. Conventional pose estimation methods typically rely on the target's CAD model or necessitate specific network training tailored to particular object classes. Some existing methods have achieved promising results in mesh-free object and scene pose estimation by inverting the Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF). However, they still struggle with adverse initializations such as large rotations and translations. To address this issue, we propose an efficient method for accurate camera pose estimation by inverting 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS). Specifically, a gradient-based differentiable framework optimizes camera pose by minimizing the residual between the query image and the rendered image, requiring no training. An end-to-end matching module is designed to enhance the model's robustness against adverse initializations, while minimizing pixel-level comparing loss aids in precise pose estimation. Experimental results on synthetic and complex real-world data demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in challenging conditions and the accuracy of camera pose estimation.