# TUGS: Physics-based Compact Representation of Underwater Scenes by Tensorized Gaussian

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.08811 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.08811/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 30 of its 53 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 May 2025.

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

- [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)
- [Mip-NeRF 360: Unbounded Anti-Aliased Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12077/) (2021)
- [D-NeRF: Neural Radiance Fields for Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13961/) (2020)
- [TensoRF: Tensorial Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.09517/) (2022)
- [K-Planes: Explicit Radiance Fields in Space, Time, and Appearance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.10241/) (2023)
- [Block-NeRF: Scalable Large Scene Neural View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05263/) (2022)
- [Zip-NeRF: Anti-Aliased Grid-Based Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06706/) (2023)
- [Nerfstudio: A Modular Framework for Neural Radiance Field Development](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04264/) (2023)
- [OpenScene: 3D Scene Understanding with Open Vocabularies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.15654/) (2022)
- [Gaussian Splatting SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06741/) (2023)
- [LangSplat: 3D Language Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.16084/) (2023)
- [Mega-NeRF: Scalable Construction of Large-Scale NeRFs for Virtual Fly-Throughs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10703/) (2021)
- [DrivingGaussian: Composite Gaussian Splatting for Surrounding Dynamic Autonomous Driving Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.07920/) (2023)
- [Neural Radiance Flow for 4D View Synthesis and Video Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09790/) (2020)
- [Tensor4D : Efficient Neural 4D Decomposition for High-fidelity Dynamic Reconstruction and Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.11610/) (2022)
- [CLIP2Scene: Towards Label-efficient 3D Scene Understanding by CLIP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.04926/) (2023)
- [VR-GS: A Physical Dynamics-Aware Interactive Gaussian Splatting System in Virtual Reality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.16663/) (2024)
- [NeRF-DS: Neural Radiance Fields for Dynamic Specular Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14435/) (2023)
- [TensorLy: Tensor Learning in Python](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.09555/) (2016)
- [Real-world Underwater Enhancement: Challenges, Benchmarks, and Solutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.05320/) (2019)
- [SeaThru-NeRF: Neural Radiance Fields in Scattering Media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07743/) (2023)
- [WaterSplatting: Fast Underwater 3D Scene Reconstruction Using Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.08206/) (2024)
- [SeaSplat: Representing Underwater Scenes with 3D Gaussian Splatting and a Physically Grounded Image Formation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.17345/) (2024)
- [UE4-NeRF:Neural Radiance Field for Real-Time Rendering of Large-Scale Scene](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.13263/) (2023)
- [UW-GS: Distractor-Aware 3D Gaussian Splatting for Enhanced Underwater Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.01517/) (2024)
- [Haze Visibility Enhancement: A Survey and Quantitative Benchmarking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.06235/) (2016)
- [DeepSeeColor: Realtime Adaptive Color Correction for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles via Deep Learning Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04025/) (2023)
- [Benchmarking Implicit Neural Representation and Geometric Rendering in Real-Time RGB-D SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.19473/) (2024)
- [SLAIM: Robust Dense Neural SLAM for Online Tracking and Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.11419/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Underwater 3D scene reconstruction is crucial for multimedia applications in adverse environments, such as underwater robotic perception and navigation. However, the complexity of interactions between light propagation, water medium, and object surfaces poses significant difficulties for existing methods in accurately simulating their interplay. Additionally, expensive training and rendering costs limit their practical application. Therefore, we propose Tensorized Underwater Gaussian Splatting (TUGS), a compact underwater 3D representation based on physical modeling of complex underwater light fields. TUGS includes a physics-based underwater Adaptive Medium Estimation (AME) module, enabling accurate simulation of both light attenuation and backscatter effects in underwater environments, and introduces Tensorized Densification Strategies (TDS) to efficiently refine the tensorized representation during optimization. TUGS is able to render high-quality underwater images with faster rendering speeds and less memory usage. Extensive experiments on real-world underwater datasets have demonstrated that TUGS can efficiently achieve superior reconstruction quality using a limited number of parameters. The code is available at https://liamlian0727.github.io/TUGS