# PolarGS: Polarimetric Cues for Ambiguity-Free Gaussian Splatting with Accurate Geometry Recovery

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.00794 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.00794/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 36 of its 65 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 30 Nov 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 36)

- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [NeuS: Learning Neural Implicit Surfaces by Volume Rendering for Multi-view Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10689/) (2021)
- [VGGT: Visual Geometry Grounded Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11651/) (2025)
- [Depth Anything: Unleashing the Power of Large-Scale Unlabeled Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.10891/) (2024)
- [2D Gaussian Splatting for Geometrically Accurate Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17888/) (2024)
- [Volume Rendering of Neural Implicit Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12052/) (2021)
- [Zip-NeRF: Anti-Aliased Grid-Based Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06706/) (2023)
- [SuGaR: Surface-Aligned Gaussian Splatting for Efficient 3D Mesh Reconstruction and High-Quality Mesh Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12775/) (2023)
- [PGSR: Planar-based Gaussian Splatting for Efficient and High-Fidelity Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.06521/) (2024)
- [gsplat: An Open-Source Library for Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.06765/) (2024)
- [DNGaussian: Optimizing Sparse-View 3D Gaussian Radiance Fields with Global-Local Depth Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.06912/) (2024)
- [Gaussian Opacity Fields: Efficient Adaptive Surface Reconstruction in Unbounded Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.10772/) (2024)
- [BakedSDF: Meshing Neural SDFs for Real-Time View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.14859/) (2023)
- [GaussianPro: 3D Gaussian Splatting with Progressive Propagation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14650/) (2024)
- [NeRO: Neural Geometry and BRDF Reconstruction of Reflective Objects from Multiview Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.17398/) (2023)
- [NeuSG: Neural Implicit Surface Reconstruction with 3D Gaussian Splatting Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00846/) (2023)
- [DN-Splatter: Depth and Normal Priors for Gaussian Splatting and Meshing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17822/) (2024)
- [RaDe-GS: Rasterizing Depth in Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.01467/) (2024)
- [Multi-Scale Geometric Consistency Guided Multi-View Stereo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08103/) (2019)
- [GS2Mesh: Surface Reconstruction from Gaussian Splatting via Novel Stereo Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01810/) (2024)
- [Shape from Polarization for Complex Scenes in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.11377/) (2021)
- [PANDORA: Polarization-Aided Neural Decomposition Of Radiance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13458/) (2022)
- [MILo: Mesh-In-the-Loop Gaussian Splatting for Detailed and Efficient Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.24096/) (2025)
- [NeISF: Neural Incident Stokes Field for Geometry and Material Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.13187/) (2023)
- [NeRSP: Neural 3D Reconstruction for Reflective Objects with Sparse Polarized Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.07111/) (2024)
- [MeshGS: Adaptive Mesh-Aligned Gaussian Splatting for High-Quality Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08941/) (2024)
- [3iGS: Factorised Tensorial Illumination for 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.03753/) (2024)
- [PISR: Polarimetric Neural Implicit Surface Reconstruction for Textureless and Specular Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.14331/) (2024)
- [Polarization Guided Specular Reflection Separation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.11652/) (2021)
- [AGS-Mesh: Adaptive Gaussian Splatting and Meshing with Geometric Priors for Indoor Room Reconstruction Using Smartphones](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.19271/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Differentiable Polarized Path Tracing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.13265/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent advances in surface reconstruction for 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) have enabled remarkable geometric accuracy. However, their performance degrades in photometrically ambiguous regions such as reflective and textureless surfaces, where unreliable cues disrupt photometric consistency and hinder accurate geometry estimation. Reflected light is often partially polarized in a manner that reveals surface orientation, making polarization an optic complement to photometric cues in resolving such ambiguities. Therefore, we propose PolarGS, an optics-aware extension of RGB-based 3DGS that leverages polarization as an optical prior to resolve photometric ambiguities and enhance reconstruction accuracy. Specifically, we introduce two complementary modules: a polarization-guided photometric correction strategy, which ensures photometric consistency by identifying reflective regions via the Degree of Linear Polarization (DoLP) and refining reflective Gaussians with Color Refinement Maps; and a polarization-enhanced Gaussian densification mechanism for textureless area geometry recovery, which integrates both Angle and Degree of Linear Polarization (A/DoLP) into a PatchMatch-based depth completion process. This enables the back-projection and fusion of new Gaussians, leading to more complete reconstruction. PolarGS is framework-agnostic and achieves superior geometric accuracy compared to state-of-the-art methods.