# GS-CPR: Efficient Camera Pose Refinement via 3D Gaussian Splatting

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.11085 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.11085/

## Key facts

- Cited by 31 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 45 of its 60 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Aug 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 45)

- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Masked-attention Mask Transformer for Universal Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.01527/) (2021)
- [DUSt3R: Geometric 3D Vision Made Easy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14132/) (2023)
- [SuperGlue: Learning Feature Matching with Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11763/) (2019)
- [SuperPoint: Self-Supervised Interest Point Detection and Description](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.07629/) (2017)
- [LoFTR: Detector-Free Local Feature Matching with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00680/) (2021)
- [Grounding Image Matching in 3D with MASt3R](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09756/) (2024)
- [NetVLAD: CNN architecture for weakly supervised place recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.07247/) (2015)
- [Scaffold-GS: Structured 3D Gaussians for View-Adaptive Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00109/) (2023)
- [LightGlue: Local Feature Matching at Light Speed](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.13643/) (2023)
- [From Coarse to Fine: Robust Hierarchical Localization at Large Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03506/) (2018)
- [INeRF: Inverting Neural Radiance Fields for Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.05877/) (2020)
- [D2-Net: A Trainable CNN for Joint Detection and Description of Local Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.03561/) (2019)
- [DSAC - Differentiable RANSAC for Camera Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.05705/) (2016)
- [Large-Scale Image Retrieval with Attentive Deep Local Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.06321/) (2016)
- [Geometric Loss Functions for Camera Pose Regression with Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.00390/) (2017)
- [Understanding the Limitations of CNN-based Absolute Camera Pose Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.07504/) (2019)
- [Visual Camera Re-Localization from RGB and RGB-D Images Using DSAC](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.12324/) (2020)
- [Modelling Uncertainty in Deep Learning for Camera Relocalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1509.05909/) (2015)
- [End-to-end Learning of Deep Visual Representations for Image Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.07940/) (2016)
- [LENS: Localization enhanced by NeRF synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.06558/) (2021)
- [Self-supervising Fine-grained Region Similarities for Large-scale Image Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.03926/) (2020)
- [Learning Multi-Scene Absolute Pose Regression with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.11468/) (2021)
- [Accelerated Coordinate Encoding: Learning to Relocalize in Minutes using RGB and Poses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14059/) (2023)
- [LaMAR: Benchmarking Localization and Mapping for Augmented Reality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.10770/) (2022)
- [AtLoc: Attention Guided Camera Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.03557/) (2019)
- [DFNet: Enhance Absolute Pose Regression with Direct Feature Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.00559/) (2022)
- [On the Limits of Pseudo Ground Truth in Visual Camera Re-localisation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.00524/) (2021)
- [Learning to Navigate the Energy Landscape](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.05772/) (2016)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 31)

- [What Is The Best 3D Scene Representation for Robotics? From Geometric to Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.03422/) (2025)
- [GSplatLoc: Grounding Keypoint Descriptors into 3D Gaussian Splatting for Improved Visual Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.16502/) (2024)
- [From Sparse to Dense: Camera Relocalization with Scene-Specific Detector from Feature Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.19358/) (2025)
- [Gaussian Splatting Feature Fields for Privacy-Preserving Visual Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.23569/) (2025)
- [A Guide to Structureless Visual Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.17636/) (2025)
- [3DGEER: 3D Gaussian Rendering Made Exact and Efficient for Generic Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.24053/) (2025)
- [Digital Twin Generation from Visual Data: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13159/) (2025)
- [GSVisLoc: Generalizable Visual Localization for Gaussian Splatting Scene Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.18242/) (2025)
- [Adversarial Exploitation of Data Diversity Improves Visual Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.00138/) (2024)
- [AnimateScene: Camera-controllable Animation in Any Scene](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.05982/) (2025)
- [SmallGS: Gaussian Splatting-based Camera Pose Estimation for Small-Baseline Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.17810/) (2025)
- [Coca-Splat: Collaborative Optimization for Camera Parameters and 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.00639/) (2025)
- [A Constrained Optimization Approach for Gaussian Splatting from Coarsely-posed Images and Noisy Lidar Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.09129/) (2025)
- [Camera Pose Refinement via 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.17876/) (2025)
- [RayGaussX: Accelerating Gaussian-Based Ray Marching for Real-Time and High-Quality Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.07782/) (2025)
- [GRLoc: Geometric Representation Regression for Visual Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.13864/) (2025)
- [ImLoc: Revisiting Visual Localization with Image-based Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.04185/) (2026)
- [Rethinking Pose Refinement in 3D Gaussian Splatting under Pose Prior and Geometric Uncertainty](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.16538/) (2026)
- [DRoPS: Dynamic 3D Reconstruction of Pre-Scanned Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.24770/) (2026)
- [Image Compression Using Novel View Synthesis Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.13862/) (2024)
- [Gaussian Alignment for Relative Camera Pose Estimation via Single-View Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.13652/) (2025)
- [L3:Scene-agnostic Visual Localization in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.07937/) (2026)
- [PlanaReLoc: Camera Relocalization in 3D Planar Primitives via Region-Based Structure Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.20818/) (2026)
- [Hierarchical Visual Relocalization with Nearest View Synthesis from Feature Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.29185/) (2026)
- [LSGS-Loc: Towards Robust 3DGS-Based Visual Localization for Large-Scale UAV Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.05402/) (2026)
- [Disambiguating 2D-3D Correspondences in Gaussian Splatting-based Feature Fields for Visual Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.07351/) (2026)
- [SG2Loc: Sequential Visual Localization on 3D Scene Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.11880/) (2026)
- [Revisiting Pose Sensitivity in Splat-based Computed Tomography under Sparse-view Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.04752/) (2026)
- [G2ARD-GS: Geometry-Guided Anchor-Regularized Gaussian Splatting Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.05704/) (2026)
- [GS-CPE: Unified 6-Degree-of-Freedom Camera Pose Estimation via 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.10938/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We leverage 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) as a scene representation and propose a novel test-time camera pose refinement (CPR) framework, GS-CPR. This framework enhances the localization accuracy of state-of-the-art absolute pose regression and scene coordinate regression methods. The 3DGS model renders high-quality synthetic images and depth maps to facilitate the establishment of 2D-3D correspondences. GS-CPR obviates the need for training feature extractors or descriptors by operating directly on RGB images, utilizing the 3D foundation model, MASt3R, for precise 2D matching. To improve the robustness of our model in challenging outdoor environments, we incorporate an exposure-adaptive module within the 3DGS framework. Consequently, GS-CPR enables efficient one-shot pose refinement given a single RGB query and a coarse initial pose estimation. Our proposed approach surpasses leading NeRF-based optimization methods in both accuracy and runtime across indoor and outdoor visual localization benchmarks, achieving new state-of-the-art accuracy on two indoor datasets. The project page is available at https://xrim-lab.github.io/GS-CPR/.