# Learning to Remove Lens Flare in Event Camera

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.09016 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.09016/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 50 of its 90 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Dec 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 50)

- [3D U-Net: Learning Dense Volumetric Segmentation from Sparse Annotation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.06650/) (2016)
- [Event-based Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08405/) (2019)
- [DSEC: A Stereo Event Camera Dataset for Driving Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.06011/) (2021)
- [The Multi Vehicle Stereo Event Camera Dataset: An Event Camera Dataset for 3D Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.10202/) (2018)
- [Learning to Detect Objects with a 1 Megapixel Event Camera](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.13436/) (2020)
- [Video to Events: Recycling Video Datasets for Event Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.03095/) (2019)
- [E-RAFT: Dense Optical Flow from Event Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10552/) (2021)
- [VisEvent: Reliable Object Tracking via Collaboration of Frame and Event Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.05015/) (2021)
- [Time Lens++: Event-based Frame Interpolation with Parametric Non-linear Flow and Multi-scale Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.17191/) (2022)
- [Self-Supervised Learning of Event-Based Optical Flow with Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.01862/) (2021)
- [EV-SegNet: Semantic Segmentation for Event-based Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.12039/) (2018)
- [N-ImageNet: Towards Robust, Fine-Grained Object Recognition with Event Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.01041/) (2021)
- [Deep Learning for Event-based Vision: A Comprehensive Survey and Benchmarks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.08890/) (2023)
- [Learning Monocular Dense Depth from Events](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.08350/) (2020)
- [DDD17: End-To-End DAVIS Driving Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.01458/) (2017)
- [ESS: Learning Event-based Semantic Segmentation from Still Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.10016/) (2022)
- [DDD20 End-to-End Event Camera Driving Dataset: Fusing Frames and Events with Deep Learning for Improved Steering Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.08605/) (2020)
- [From Chaos Comes Order: Ordering Event Representations for Object Recognition and Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13455/) (2023)
- [How to Train Neural Networks for Flare Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12485/) (2020)
- [Flare7K: A Phenomenological Nighttime Flare Removal Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.06570/) (2022)
- [EventGAN: Leveraging Large Scale Image Datasets for Event Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01584/) (2019)
- [Hierarchical Neural Memory Network for Low Latency Event Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.17852/) (2023)
- [Dense Continuous-Time Optical Flow from Events and Frames](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13674/) (2022)
- [Event Probability Mask (EPM) and Event Denoising Convolutional Neural Network (EDnCNN) for Neuromorphic Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.08282/) (2020)
- [OpenESS: Event-based Semantic Scene Understanding with Open Vocabularies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.05259/) (2024)
- [Flare7K++: Mixing Synthetic and Real Datasets for Nighttime Flare Removal and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.04236/) (2023)
- [A Unified Framework for Event-based Frame Interpolation with Ad-hoc Deblurring in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.05191/) (2023)
- [Nighttime Smartphone Reflective Flare Removal Using Optical Center Symmetry Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15046/) (2023)
- [V2CE: Video to Continuous Events Simulator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.08891/) (2023)
- [Improving Lens Flare Removal with General Purpose Pipeline and Multiple Light Sources Recovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16460/) (2023)

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

- [Forging Spatial Intelligence: A Roadmap of Multi-Modal Data Pre-Training for Autonomous Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.24385/) (2025)
- [Event-Driven Neuromorphic Vision Enables Energy-Efficient Visual Place Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.03277/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Event cameras have the potential to revolutionize vision systems with their high temporal resolution and dynamic range, yet they remain susceptible to lens flare, a fundamental optical artifact that causes severe degradation. In event streams, this optical artifact forms a complex, spatio-temporal distortion that has been largely overlooked. We present E-Deflare, the first systematic framework for removing lens flare from event camera data. We first establish the theoretical foundation by deriving a physics-grounded forward model of the non-linear suppression mechanism. This insight enables the creation of the E-Deflare Benchmark, a comprehensive resource featuring a large-scale simulated training set, E-Flare-2.7K, and the first-ever paired real-world test set, E-Flare-R, captured by our novel optical system. Empowered by this benchmark, we design E-DeflareNet, which achieves state-of-the-art restoration performance. Extensive experiments validate our approach and demonstrate clear benefits for downstream tasks. Code and datasets are publicly available.