# Sources of Uncertainty in 3D Scene Reconstruction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.06407 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.06407/

## Key facts

- Cited by 10 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 44 of its 54 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Sep 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 44)

- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Dropout as a Bayesian Approximation: Representing Model Uncertainty in Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02142/) (2015)
- [Simple and Scalable Predictive Uncertainty Estimation using Deep Ensembles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.01474/) (2016)
- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [What Uncertainties Do We Need in Bayesian Deep Learning for Computer Vision?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.04977/) (2017)
- [Mip-NeRF 360: Unbounded Anti-Aliased Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12077/) (2021)
- [Can You Trust Your Model's Uncertainty? Evaluating Predictive Uncertainty Under Dataset Shift](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.02530/) (2019)
- [NeRF in the Wild: Neural Radiance Fields for Unconstrained Photo Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.02268/) (2020)
- [NeRF++: Analyzing and Improving Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.07492/) (2020)
- [Zip-NeRF: Anti-Aliased Grid-Based Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06706/) (2023)
- [BARF: Bundle-Adjusting Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.06405/) (2021)
- [Nerfstudio: A Modular Framework for Neural Radiance Field Development](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04264/) (2023)
- [Gaussian Splatting SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06741/) (2023)
- [Laplace Redux -- Effortless Bayesian Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.14806/) (2021)
- [Dense Depth Priors for Neural Radiance Fields from Sparse Input Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03288/) (2021)
- [Advances in Variational Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.05597/) (2017)
- [Self-Calibrating Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.13826/) (2021)
- [Evaluating Scalable Bayesian Deep Learning Methods for Robust Computer Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.01620/) (2019)
- [On the uncertainty of self-supervised monocular depth estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.06209/) (2020)
- [Deblur-NeRF: Neural Radiance Fields from Blurry Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14292/) (2021)
- [WildGaussians: 3D Gaussian Splatting in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.08447/) (2024)
- [Practical Gauss-Newton Optimisation for Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03662/) (2017)
- [DN-Splatter: Depth and Normal Priors for Gaussian Splatting and Meshing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17822/) (2024)
- [Uncertainty Estimates and Multi-Hypotheses Networks for Optical Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.07095/) (2018)
- [ActiveNeRF: Learning where to See with Uncertainty Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.08546/) (2022)
- [A General Framework for Uncertainty Estimation in Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.06890/) (2019)
- [Estimating and Exploiting the Aleatoric Uncertainty in Surface Normal Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.09881/) (2021)
- [RobustNeRF: Ignoring Distractors with Robust Losses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.00833/) (2023)
- [Bayes' Rays: Uncertainty Quantification for Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.03185/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [DeSplat: Decomposed Gaussian Splatting for Distractor-Free Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.19756/) (2024)
- [Uncertainty-Aware Normal-Guided Gaussian Splatting for Surface Reconstruction from Sparse Image Sequences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11172/) (2025)
- [View-Dependent Uncertainty Estimation of 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.07370/) (2025)
- [Uncertainty-driven 3D Gaussian Splatting Active Mapping via Anisotropic Visibility Field](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.30342/) (2026)
- [MUGSQA: Novel Multi-Uncertainty-Based Gaussian Splatting Quality Assessment Method, Dataset, and Benchmarks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.06830/) (2025)
- [WarpRF: Multi-View Consistency for Training-Free Uncertainty Quantification and Applications in Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.22433/) (2025)
- [RIGI: Rectifying Image-to-3D Generation Inconsistency via Uncertainty-aware Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18866/) (2024)
- [OUGS: Active View Selection via Object-aware Uncertainty Estimation in 3DGS](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.09397/) (2025)
- [NeRF-based Spacecraft Reconstruction from Monocular Imagery Under Illumination Variability and Pose Uncertainty](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.18447/) (2026)
- [VCURF: Virtual Camera-based Uncertainty of Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.04076/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The process of 3D scene reconstruction can be affected by numerous uncertainty sources in real-world scenes. While Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs) and 3D Gaussian Splatting (GS) achieve high-fidelity rendering, they lack built-in mechanisms to directly address or quantify uncertainties arising from the presence of noise, occlusions, confounding outliers, and imprecise camera pose inputs. In this paper, we introduce a taxonomy that categorizes different sources of uncertainty inherent in these methods. Moreover, we extend NeRF- and GS-based methods with uncertainty estimation techniques, including learning uncertainty outputs and ensembles, and perform an empirical study to assess their ability to capture the sensitivity of the reconstruction. Our study highlights the need for addressing various uncertainty aspects when designing NeRF/GS-based methods for uncertainty-aware 3D reconstruction.