# Point Mamba: A Novel Point Cloud Backbone Based on State Space Model with Octree-Based Ordering Strategy

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.06467 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.06467/

## Key facts

- Cited by 73 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Point clouds, detection and remote sensing, one of 10 directions in State-space sequence models (S4, Mamba).
- Builds on 49 of its 61 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Mar 2024.

## Placed in

- State-space sequence models (S4, Mamba) / [Point clouds, detection and remote sensing](https://mlsanity.com/ssm/point-clouds-detection-and-remote-sensing/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 49)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [PointNet: Deep Learning on Point Sets for 3D Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00593/) (2016)
- [Mamba: Linear-Time Sequence Modeling with Selective State Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00752/) (2023)
- [PointNet++: Deep Hierarchical Feature Learning on Point Sets in a Metric Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02413/) (2017)
- [ScanNet: Richly-annotated 3D Reconstructions of Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.04405/) (2017)
- [Efficiently Modeling Long Sequences with Structured State Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.00396/) (2021)
- [Dynamic Graph CNN for Learning on Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.07829/) (2018)
- [3D U-Net: Learning Dense Volumetric Segmentation from Sparse Annotation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.06650/) (2016)
- [Point Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.00931/) (2020)
- [4D Spatio-Temporal ConvNets: Minkowski Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08755/) (2019)
- [Vision Mamba: Efficient Visual Representation Learning with Bidirectional State Space Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.09417/) (2024)
- [VMamba: Visual State Space Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.10166/) (2024)
- [Simplified State Space Layers for Sequence Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.04933/) (2022)
- [PointCNN: Convolution On X-Transformed Points](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.07791/) (2018)
- [PVT v2: Improved Baselines with Pyramid Vision Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.13797/) (2021)
- [3D Semantic Segmentation with Submanifold Sparse Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.10275/) (2017)
- [PCT: Point cloud transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09688/) (2020)
- [Multi-View 3D Object Detection Network for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07759/) (2016)
- [PointConv: Deep Convolutional Networks on 3D Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.07246/) (2018)
- [Panoptic Feature Pyramid Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.02446/) (2019)
- [Combining Recurrent, Convolutional, and Continuous-time Models with Linear State-Space Layers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.13985/) (2021)
- [HiPPO: Recurrent Memory with Optimal Polynomial Projections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.07669/) (2020)
- [Point Transformer V3: Simpler, Faster, Stronger](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10035/) (2023)
- [RandLA-Net: Efficient Semantic Segmentation of Large-Scale Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11236/) (2019)
- [Multi-view Convolutional Neural Networks for 3D Shape Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.00880/) (2015)
- [On the Parameterization and Initialization of Diagonal State Space Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.11893/) (2022)
- [Point Transformer V2: Grouped Vector Attention and Partition-based Pooling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.05666/) (2022)
- [Large-scale Point Cloud Semantic Segmentation with Superpoint Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.09869/) (2017)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 73)

- [GigaWorld-Policy: An Efficient Action-Centered World--Action Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.17240/) (2026)
- [State Space Model for New-Generation Network Alternative to Transformers: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09516/) (2024)
- [Vision Mamba: A Comprehensive Survey and Taxonomy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.04404/) (2024)
- [A Survey on Visual Mamba](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15956/) (2024)
- [DeSiRe-GS: 4D Street Gaussians for Static-Dynamic Decomposition and Surface Reconstruction for Urban Driving Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.11921/) (2024)
- [Visual Mamba: A Survey and New Outlooks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.18861/) (2024)
- [DiffPano: Scalable and Consistent Text to Panorama Generation with Spherical Epipolar-Aware Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.24203/) (2024)
- [SegMAN: Omni-scale Context Modeling with State Space Models and Local Attention for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.11890/) (2024)
- [NeSLAM: Neural Implicit Mapping and Self-Supervised Feature Tracking With Depth Completion and Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.20034/) (2024)
- [OccMamba: Semantic Occupancy Prediction with State Space Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.09859/) (2024)
- [Understanding the differences in Foundation Models: Attention, State Space Models, and Recurrent Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.15731/) (2024)
- [Mamba-FETrack: Frame-Event Tracking via State Space Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.18174/) (2024)
- [PointRWKV: Efficient RWKV-Like Model for Hierarchical Point Cloud Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.15214/) (2024)
- [Mambular: A Sequential Model for Tabular Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.06291/) (2024)
- [Rethinking Efficient and Effective Point-based Networks for Event Camera Classification and Regression: EventMamba](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.06116/) (2024)
- [Mamba in Vision: A Comprehensive Survey of Techniques and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.03105/) (2024)
- [QuadMamba: Learning Quadtree-based Selective Scan for Visual State Space Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.06806/) (2024)
- [MARCA: Mamba Accelerator with ReConfigurable Architecture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.11440/) (2024)
- [MambaMOS: LiDAR-based 3D Moving Object Segmentation with Motion-aware State Space Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.12794/) (2024)
- [MAMBA4D: Efficient Long-Sequence Point Cloud Video Understanding with Disentangled Spatial-Temporal State Space Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.14338/) (2024)
- [Multi-Modal UAV Detection, Classification and Tracking Algorithm -- Technical Report for CVPR 2024 UG2 Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.16464/) (2024)
- [QMamba: On First Exploration of Vision Mamba for Image Quality Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09546/) (2024)
- [A Lesson in Splats: Teacher-Guided Diffusion for 3D Gaussian Splats Generation with 2D Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.00623/) (2024)
- [Skip Mamba Diffusion for Monocular 3D Semantic Scene Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.07260/) (2025)
- [Vision Mamba for Classification of Breast Ultrasound Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.03552/) (2024)
- [MUSE: Mamba is Efficient Multi-scale Learner for Text-video Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.10575/) (2024)
- [MambaPlace:Text-to-Point-Cloud Cross-Modal Place Recognition with Attention Mamba Mechanisms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.15740/) (2024)
- [On the Efficiency of NLP-Inspired Methods for Tabular Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.17207/) (2024)
- [TopoLiDM: Topology-Aware LiDAR Diffusion Models for Interpretable and Realistic LiDAR Point Cloud Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.22454/) (2025)
- [Millimeter Wave Radar-based Human Activity Recognition for Healthcare Monitoring Robot](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.01882/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recently, state space model (SSM) has gained great attention due to its promising performance, linear complexity, and long sequence modeling ability in both language and image domains. However, it is non-trivial to extend SSM to the point cloud field, because of the causality requirement of SSM and the disorder and irregularity nature of point clouds. In this paper, we propose a novel SSM-based point cloud processing backbone, named Point Mamba, with a causality-aware ordering mechanism. To construct the causal dependency relationship, we design an octree-based ordering strategy on raw irregular points, globally sorting points in a z-order sequence and also retaining their spatial proximity. Our method achieves state-of-the-art performance compared with transformer-based counterparts, with 93.4% accuracy and 75.7 mIOU respectively on the ModelNet40 classification dataset and ScanNet semantic segmentation dataset. Furthermore, our Point Mamba has linear complexity, which is more efficient than transformer-based methods. Our method demonstrates the great potential that SSM can serve as a generic backbone in point cloud understanding. Codes are released at https://github.com/IRMVLab/Point-Mamba.