# UW-GS: Distractor-Aware 3D Gaussian Splatting for Enhanced Underwater Scene Reconstruction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.01517 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.01517/

## Key facts

- Cited by 24 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 32 of its 57 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Oct 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 32)

- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [Mip-NeRF 360: Unbounded Anti-Aliased Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12077/) (2021)
- [Mip-NeRF: A Multiscale Representation for Anti-Aliasing Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13415/) (2021)
- [Depth Anything: Unleashing the Power of Large-Scale Unlabeled Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.10891/) (2024)
- [4D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Dynamic Scene Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08528/) (2023)
- [Deformable 3D Gaussians for High-Fidelity Monocular Dynamic Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.13101/) (2023)
- [Neural Scene Flow Fields for Space-Time View Synthesis of Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13084/) (2020)
- [Zip-NeRF: Anti-Aliased Grid-Based Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06706/) (2023)
- [Mip-Splatting: Alias-free 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16493/) (2023)
- [Compact 3D Gaussian Representation for Radiance Field](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.13681/) (2023)
- [DrivingGaussian: Composite Gaussian Splatting for Surrounding Dynamic Autonomous Driving Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.07920/) (2023)
- [SC-GS: Sparse-Controlled Gaussian Splatting for Editable Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14937/) (2023)
- [A Survey on 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.03890/) (2024)
- [Mini-Splatting: Representing Scenes with a Constrained Number of Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14166/) (2024)
- [Gaussian-Flow: 4D Reconstruction with Dynamic 3D Gaussian Particle](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03431/) (2023)
- [Multi-Scale 3D Gaussian Splatting for Anti-Aliased Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17089/) (2023)
- [F2-NeRF: Fast Neural Radiance Field Training with Free Camera Trajectories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15951/) (2023)
- [Pixel-GS: Density Control with Pixel-aware Gradient for 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15530/) (2024)
- [Delicate Textured Mesh Recovery from NeRF via Adaptive Surface Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.02091/) (2023)
- [FreGS: 3D Gaussian Splatting with Progressive Frequency Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.06908/) (2024)
- [RobustNeRF: Ignoring Distractors with Robust Losses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.00833/) (2023)
- [NerfAcc: Efficient Sampling Accelerates NeRFs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.04966/) (2023)
- [BAD-NeRF: Bundle Adjusted Deblur Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12853/) (2022)
- [SeaThru-NeRF: Neural Radiance Fields in Scattering Media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07743/) (2023)
- [Deblurring 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.00834/) (2024)
- [ViP-NeRF: Visibility Prior for Sparse Input Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.00041/) (2023)
- [WaterSplatting: Fast Underwater 3D Scene Reconstruction Using Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.08206/) (2024)
- [ScatterNeRF: Seeing Through Fog with Physically-Based Inverse Neural Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.02103/) (2023)
- [Atlantis: Enabling Underwater Depth Estimation with Stable Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.12471/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 24 of 24)

- [RobustSplat: Decoupling Densification and Dynamics for Transient-Free 3DGS](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.02751/) (2025)
- [The Coralscapes Dataset: Semantic Scene Understanding in Coral Reefs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.20000/) (2025)
- [AquaNeRF: Neural Radiance Fields in Underwater Media with Distractor Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.16351/) (2025)
- [Gaussian Splashing: Direct Volumetric Rendering Underwater](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.19588/) (2024)
- [3D-UIR: 3D Gaussian for Underwater 3D Scene Reconstruction via Physics Based Appearance-Medium Decoupling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.21238/) (2025)
- [RUSplatting: Robust 3D Gaussian Splatting for Sparse-View Underwater Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.15737/) (2025)
- [Prune Wisely, Reconstruct Sharply: Compact 3D Gaussian Splatting via Adaptive Pruning and Difference-of-Gaussian Primitives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.24136/) (2026)
- [AI-Driven Marine Robotics: Emerging Trends in Underwater Perception and Ecosystem Monitoring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.01878/) (2025)
- [From Restoration to Reconstruction: Rethinking 3D Gaussian Splatting for Underwater Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.17789/) (2025)
- [OceanSplat: Object-aware Gaussian Splatting with Trinocular View Consistency for Underwater Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.04984/) (2026)
- [BVI-Mamba: Video Enhancement Using a Visual State-Space Model for Low-Light and Underwater Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.23655/) (2026)
- [Semantic-guided Gaussian Splatting for High-Fidelity Underwater Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.00800/) (2025)
- [WaterClear-GS: Optical-Aware Gaussian Splatting for Underwater Reconstruction and Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.19753/) (2026)
- [Wat3R: Underwater 3D Geometry Learning without Annotations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.08772/) (2026)
- [TUGS: Physics-based Compact Representation of Underwater Scenes by Tensorized Gaussian](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.08811/) (2025)
- [Underwater360: Reconstructing Underwater Scenes from Panoramic Images with Omnidirectional Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.26447/) (2026)
- [AquaFlow: A Monocular Gaussian Splatting SLAM for Underwater Streaming Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.22906/) (2026)
- [Gaussian Splatting Underwater: A Controlled Cross-Regime Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.25483/) (2026)
- [3D-USE: From Image-Level to Scene-Level Underwater Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.28020/) (2026)
- [FujinSplat: Seeing Through Smoke with RAW-Domain Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.06017/) (2026)
- [Tri-DehazeGS: Scene--Medium Decoupled Gaussian Splatting with Transmittance-Aware Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.11223/) (2026)
- [Geometry beneath the Waves: Dense Priors for Sparse-View Underwater 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.18737/) (2026)
- [OceanXL: Large-scale Underwater 3D Gaussian Splatting via Block Partitioning and Adaptive Pruning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.29985/) (2026)
- [PUGS: Physics-Guided Uncertainty Modeling for Underwater Dynamic 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.17936/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

3D Gaussian splatting (3DGS) offers the capability to achieve real-time high quality 3D scene rendering. However, 3DGS assumes that the scene is in a clear medium environment and struggles to generate satisfactory representations in underwater scenes, where light absorption and scattering are prevalent and moving objects are involved. To overcome these, we introduce a novel Gaussian Splatting-based method, UW-GS, designed specifically for underwater applications. It introduces a color appearance that models distance-dependent color variation, employs a new physics-based density control strategy to enhance clarity for distant objects, and uses a binary motion mask to handle dynamic content. Optimized with a well-designed loss function supporting for scattering media and strengthened by pseudo-depth maps, UW-GS outperforms existing methods with PSNR gains up to 1.26dB. To fully verify the effectiveness of the model, we also developed a new underwater dataset, S-UW, with dynamic object masks.