# Introducing Unbiased Depth into 2D Gaussian Splatting for High-accuracy Surface Reconstruction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.06587 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06587/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 7 of its 10 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Mar 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [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)
- [2D Gaussian Splatting for Geometrically Accurate Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17888/) (2024)
- [MonoSDF: Exploring Monocular Geometric Cues for Neural Implicit Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00665/) (2022)
- [A Hierarchical 3D Gaussian Representation for Real-Time Rendering of Very Large Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12080/) (2024)
- [Geo-Neus: Geometry-Consistent Neural Implicit Surfaces Learning for Multi-view Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15848/) (2022)
- [3DGSR: Implicit Surface Reconstruction with 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00409/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [GVGS: Gaussian Visibility-Aware Multi-View Geometry for Accurate Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.20331/) (2026)
- [LiteTex-GS: Fast and Lightweight Texturing for Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.23380/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recently, 2D Gaussian Splatting (2DGS) has demonstrated superior geometry reconstruction quality than the popular 3DGS by using 2D surfels to approximate thin surfaces. However, it falls short when dealing with glossy surfaces, resulting in visible holes in these areas. We find that the reflection discontinuity causes the issue. To fit the jump from diffuse to specular reflection at different viewing angles, depth bias is introduced in the optimized Gaussian primitives. To address that, we first replace the depth distortion loss in 2DGS with a novel depth convergence loss, which imposes a strong constraint on depth continuity. Then, we rectify the depth criterion in determining the actual surface, which fully accounts for all the intersecting Gaussians along the ray. Qualitative and quantitative evaluations across various datasets reveal that our method significantly improves reconstruction quality, with more complete and accurate surfaces than 2DGS. Code is available at https://github.com/XiaoXinyyx/Unbiased_Surfel.