# D4D: An RGBD diffusion model to boost monocular depth estimation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.07516 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07516/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in 3D, point cloud and scene generation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 35 of its 68 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Mar 2024.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [3D, point cloud and scene generation](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/3d-point-cloud-and-scene-generation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 35)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [EfficientNet: Rethinking Model Scaling for Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11946/) (2019)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [Pyramid Vision Transformer: A Versatile Backbone for Dense Prediction without Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.12122/) (2021)
- [Domain Randomization for Transferring Deep Neural Networks from Simulation to the Real World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06907/) (2017)
- [Depth Map Prediction from a Single Image using a Multi-Scale Deep Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.2283/) (2014)
- [Training Generative Adversarial Networks with Limited Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.06676/) (2020)
- [Diffusion Models: A Comprehensive Survey of Methods and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.00796/) (2022)
- [Self-supervised Visual Feature Learning with Deep Neural Networks: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.06162/) (2019)
- [MetaFormer Is Actually What You Need for Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11418/) (2021)
- [DM-GAN: Dynamic Memory Generative Adversarial Networks for Text-to-Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.01310/) (2019)
- [Training Deep Networks with Synthetic Data: Bridging the Reality Gap by Domain Randomization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.06516/) (2018)
- [Unity: A General Platform for Intelligent Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.02627/) (2018)
- [DF-Net: Unsupervised Joint Learning of Depth and Flow using Cross-Task Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.01649/) (2018)
- [Revisiting Single Image Depth Estimation: Toward Higher Resolution Maps with Accurate Object Boundaries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.08673/) (2018)
- [High Quality Monocular Depth Estimation via Transfer Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.11941/) (2018)
- [FastDepth: Fast Monocular Depth Estimation on Embedded Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.03273/) (2019)
- [AttentionGAN: Unpaired Image-to-Image Translation using Attention-Guided Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11897/) (2019)
- [Improved Transformer for High-Resolution GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.07631/) (2021)
- [From source to target and back: symmetric bi-directional adaptive GAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.08824/) (2017)
- [DIML/CVL RGB-D Dataset: 2M RGB-D Images of Natural Indoor and Outdoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.11590/) (2021)
- [UVCGAN: UNet Vision Transformer cycle-consistent GAN for unpaired image-to-image translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02557/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [SGFormer: Spherical Geometry Transformer for 360 Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.14979/) (2024)
- [Towards Consistent and Controllable Image Synthesis for Face Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.02465/) (2025)
- [A Vision-Based Shared-Control Teleoperation Scheme for Controlling the Robotic Arm of a Four-Legged Robot](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.14994/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Ground-truth RGBD data are fundamental for a wide range of computer vision applications; however, those labeled samples are difficult to collect and time-consuming to produce. A common solution to overcome this lack of data is to employ graphic engines to produce synthetic proxies; however, those data do not often reflect real-world images, resulting in poor performance of the trained models at the inference step. In this paper we propose a novel training pipeline that incorporates Diffusion4D (D4D), a customized 4-channels diffusion model able to generate realistic RGBD samples. We show the effectiveness of the developed solution in improving the performances of deep learning models on the monocular depth estimation task, where the correspondence between RGB and depth map is crucial to achieving accurate measurements. Our supervised training pipeline, enriched by the generated samples, outperforms synthetic and original data performances achieving an RMSE reduction of (8.2%, 11.9%) and (8.1%, 6.1%) respectively on the indoor NYU Depth v2 and the outdoor KITTI dataset.