# MSSF: A 4D Radar and Camera Fusion Framework With Multi-Stage Sampling for 3D Object Detection in Autonomous Driving

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.15016 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15016/

## Key facts

- Cited by 14 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 45 of its 62 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 Nov 2024.

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

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [Feature Pyramid Networks for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.03144/) (2016)
- [nuScenes: A multimodal dataset for autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.11027/) (2019)
- [Deformable DETR: Deformable Transformers for End-to-End Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.04159/) (2020)
- [PointPillars: Fast Encoders for Object Detection from Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.05784/) (2018)
- [MMDetection: Open MMLab Detection Toolbox and Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.07155/) (2019)
- [VoxelNet: End-to-End Learning for Point Cloud Based 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.06396/) (2017)
- [Center-based 3D Object Detection and Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11275/) (2020)
- [PointRCNN: 3D Object Proposal Generation and Detection from Point Cloud](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04244/) (2018)
- [BEVFusion: Multi-Task Multi-Sensor Fusion with Unified Bird's-Eye View Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.13542/) (2022)
- [Hybrid Task Cascade for Instance Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.07518/) (2019)
- [PointPainting: Sequential Fusion for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.10150/) (2019)
- [3DSSD: Point-based 3D Single Stage Object Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.10187/) (2020)
- [Deep Layer Aggregation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06484/) (2017)
- [BEVFusion: A Simple and Robust LiDAR-Camera Fusion Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.13790/) (2022)
- [VoxelNeXt: Fully Sparse VoxelNet for 3D Object Detection and Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11301/) (2023)
- [Orthographic Feature Transform for Monocular 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.08188/) (2018)
- [Multimodal Virtual Point 3D Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.06881/) (2021)
- [EPNet: Enhancing Point Features with Image Semantics for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.08856/) (2020)
- [MVX-Net: Multimodal VoxelNet for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.01649/) (2019)
- [CenterFusion: Center-based Radar and Camera Fusion for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.04841/) (2020)
- [ImVoxelNet: Image to Voxels Projection for Monocular and Multi-View General-Purpose 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.01178/) (2021)
- [CLOCs: Camera-LiDAR Object Candidates Fusion for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.00784/) (2020)
- [Focal Sparse Convolutional Networks for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.12463/) (2022)
- [3D Object Detection for Autonomous Driving: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.09474/) (2022)
- [DeepInteraction: 3D Object Detection via Modality Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.11112/) (2022)
- [K-Radar: 4D Radar Object Detection for Autonomous Driving in Various Weather Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.08171/) (2022)
- [SimpleTrack: Understanding and Rethinking 3D Multi-object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.09621/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [RaGS: Unleashing 3D Gaussian Splatting from 4D Radar and Monocular Cues for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.19856/) (2025)
- [Hybrid-grained Feature Aggregation with Coarse-to-fine Language Guidance for Self-supervised Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.09320/) (2025)
- [4D mmWave Radar for Sensing Enhancement in Adverse Environments: Advances and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.24091/) (2025)
- [Large Model Enabled Embodied Intelligence for 6G Integrated Perception, Communication, and Computation Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.15109/) (2025)
- [RadarNeXt: Real-Time and Reliable 3D Object Detector Based On 4D mmWave Imaging Radar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.02314/) (2025)
- [MLF-4DRCNet: Multi-Level Fusion with 4D Radar and Camera for 3D Object Detection in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.18613/) (2025)
- [M^3Detection: Multi-Frame Multi-Level Feature Fusion for Multi-Modal 3D Object Detection with Camera and 4D Imaging Radar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.27166/) (2025)
- [4D Radar Meets LiDAR and Camera: Cooperative Perception under Adverse Weather](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.00416/) (2026)
- [Talk2PC: Enhancing 3D Visual Grounding through LiDAR and Radar Point Clouds Fusion for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.08336/) (2025)
- [Revisiting Radar Camera Alignment by Contrastive Learning for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.16368/) (2025)
- [RCGDet3D: Rethinking 4D Radar-Camera Fusion-based 3D Object Detection with Enhanced Radar Feature Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.21112/) (2026)
- [Sparse4D-Radar: An Efficient and Robust Framework for Surround-View 3D Object Detection via 4D Radar-Camera Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.04098/) (2026)
- [4D Radar Perception Algorithms for Autonomous Driving: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.19216/) (2026)
- [SGDet3D++: Geometry-Grounded Semantics for 4D Radar and Camera 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.27671/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

As one of the automotive sensors that have emerged in recent years, 4D millimeter-wave radar has a higher resolution than conventional 3D radar and provides precise elevation measurements. But its point clouds are still sparse and noisy, making it challenging to meet the requirements of autonomous driving. Camera, as another commonly used sensor, can capture rich semantic information. As a result, the fusion of 4D radar and camera can provide an affordable and robust perception solution for autonomous driving systems. However, previous radar-camera fusion methods have not yet been thoroughly investigated, resulting in a large performance gap compared to LiDAR-based methods. Specifically, they ignore the feature-blurring problem and do not deeply interact with image semantic information. To this end, we present a simple but effective multi-stage sampling fusion (MSSF) network based on 4D radar and camera. On the one hand, we design a fusion block that can deeply interact point cloud features with image features, and can be applied to commonly used single-modal backbones in a plug-and-play manner. The fusion block encompasses two types, namely, simple feature fusion (SFF) and multiscale deformable feature fusion (MSDFF). The SFF is easy to implement, while the MSDFF has stronger fusion abilities. On the other hand, we propose a semantic-guided head to perform foreground-background segmentation on voxels with voxel feature re-weighting, further alleviating the problem of feature blurring. Extensive experiments on the View-of-Delft (VoD) and TJ4DRadset datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our MSSF. Notably, compared to state-of-the-art methods, MSSF achieves a 7.0% and 4.0% improvement in 3D mean average precision on the VoD and TJ4DRadSet datasets, respectively. It even surpasses classical LiDAR-based methods on the VoD dataset.