# Rate-distortion Optimized Point Cloud Preprocessing for Geometry-based Point Cloud Compression

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.01633 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.01633/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 53 of its 91 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Aug 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 53)

- [EfficientNet: Rethinking Model Scaling for Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11946/) (2019)
- [MobileNetV2: Inverted Residuals and Linear Bottlenecks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.04381/) (2018)
- [MobileNets: Efficient Convolutional Neural Networks for Mobile Vision Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.04861/) (2017)
- [ShapeNet: An Information-Rich 3D Model Repository](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03012/) (2015)
- [Searching for MobileNetV3](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02244/) (2019)
- [PointPillars: Fast Encoders for Object Detection from Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.05784/) (2018)
- [Inception-v4, Inception-ResNet and the Impact of Residual Connections on Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.07261/) (2016)
- [4D Spatio-Temporal ConvNets: Minkowski Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08755/) (2019)
- [ShuffleNet: An Extremely Efficient Convolutional Neural Network for Mobile Devices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.01083/) (2017)
- [MnasNet: Platform-Aware Neural Architecture Search for Mobile](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.11626/) (2018)
- [End-to-end Optimized Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.01704/) (2016)
- [FBNet: Hardware-Aware Efficient ConvNet Design via Differentiable Neural Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03443/) (2018)
- [YOLOv9: Learning What You Want to Learn Using Programmable Gradient Information](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.13616/) (2024)
- [Understanding Straight-Through Estimator in Training Activation Quantized Neural Nets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.05662/) (2019)
- [Lightweight Image Super-Resolution with Information Multi-distillation Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.11856/) (2019)
- [PU-Net: Point Cloud Upsampling Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.06761/) (2018)
- [PU-GAN: a Point Cloud Upsampling Adversarial Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.10844/) (2019)
- [Learning Efficient Point Cloud Generation for Dense 3D Object Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.07036/) (2017)
- [Deep Learning for LiDAR Point Clouds in Autonomous Driving: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.09830/) (2020)
- [PointCleanNet: Learning to Denoise and Remove Outliers from Dense Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.01060/) (2019)
- [MobileNetV4 -- Universal Models for the Mobile Ecosystem](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.10518/) (2024)
- [ClassSR: A General Framework to Accelerate Super-Resolution Networks by Data Characteristic](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.04039/) (2021)
- [Multiscale Point Cloud Geometry Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.03799/) (2020)
- [Sparse Tensor-based Multiscale Representation for Point Cloud Geometry Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.10633/) (2021)
- [Learned Point Cloud Geometry Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.12037/) (2019)
- [OctAttention: Octree-Based Large-Scale Contexts Model for Point Cloud Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.06028/) (2022)
- [Rewrite the Stars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.19967/) (2024)
- [Learning Convolutional Transforms for Lossy Point Cloud Geometry Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.08548/) (2019)
- [3D Point Cloud Denoising using Graph Laplacian Regularization of a Low Dimensional Manifold Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.07252/) (2018)
- [Density-preserving Deep Point Cloud Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.12684/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Geometry-based point cloud compression (G-PCC), an international standard designed by MPEG, provides a generic framework for compressing diverse types of point clouds while ensuring interoperability across applications and devices. However, G-PCC underperforms compared to recent deep learning-based PCC methods despite its lower computational power consumption. To enhance the efficiency of G-PCC without sacrificing its interoperability or computational flexibility, we propose a novel preprocessing framework that integrates a compression-oriented voxelization network with a differentiable G-PCC surrogate model, jointly optimized in the training phase. The surrogate model mimics the rate-distortion behaviour of the non-differentiable G-PCC codec, enabling end-to-end gradient propagation. The versatile voxelization network adaptively transforms input point clouds using learning-based voxelization and effectively manipulates point clouds via global scaling, fine-grained pruning, and point-level editing for rate-distortion trade-offs. During inference, only the lightweight voxelization network is appended to the G-PCC encoder, requiring no modifications to the decoder, thus introducing no computational overhead for end users. Extensive experiments demonstrate a 38.84% average BD-rate reduction over G-PCC. By bridging classical codecs with deep learning, this work offers a practical pathway to enhance legacy compression standards while preserving their backward compatibility, making it ideal for real-world deployment.