# Multi-Modal Monocular Endoscopic Depth and Pose Estimation with Edge-Guided Self-Supervision

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.17785 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.17785/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 21 of its 38 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Feb 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 21 of 21)

- [Depth Map Prediction from a Single Image using a Multi-Scale Deep Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.2283/) (2014)
- [Unsupervised Monocular Depth Estimation with Left-Right Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.03677/) (2016)
- [Unsupervised Learning of Depth and Ego-Motion from Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.07813/) (2017)
- [MonoViT: Self-Supervised Monocular Depth Estimation with a Vision Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.03543/) (2022)
- [Dense Extreme Inception Network: Towards a Robust CNN Model for Edge Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.01955/) (2019)
- [Stereo Correspondence and Reconstruction of Endoscopic Data Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.01133/) (2021)
- [Colonoscopy 3D Video Dataset with Paired Depth from 2D-3D Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.08903/) (2022)
- [Self-Supervised Monocular Depth and Ego-Motion Estimation in Endoscopy: Appearance Flow to the Rescue](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.08122/) (2021)
- [EndoMapper dataset of complete calibrated endoscopy procedures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.14240/) (2022)
- [Dense Extreme Inception Network for Edge Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.02250/) (2021)
- [Deep Learning and Conditional Random Fields-based Depth Estimation and Topographical Reconstruction from Conventional Endoscopy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.11216/) (2017)
- [MEGANet: Multi-Scale Edge-Guided Attention Network for Weak Boundary Polyp Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.03329/) (2023)
- [SimCol3D -- 3D Reconstruction during Colonoscopy Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.11261/) (2023)
- [LightDepth: Single-View Depth Self-Supervision from Illumination Decline](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.10525/) (2023)
- [Self-supervised Learning for Dense Depth Estimation in Monocular Endoscopy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.09521/) (2018)
- [A geometry-aware deep network for depth estimation in monocular endoscopy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.10241/) (2023)
- [SegCol Challenge: Semantic Segmentation for Tools and Fold Edges in Colonoscopy data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.16078/) (2024)
- [Depth estimation of endoscopy using sim-to-real transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.13595/) (2021)
- [Task-guided Domain Gap Reduction for Monocular Depth Prediction in Endoscopy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.01663/) (2023)
- [SHADeS: Self-supervised Monocular Depth Estimation Through Non-Lambertian Image Decomposition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.12994/) (2025)
- [Occlusion-Aware Self-Supervised Monocular Depth Estimation for Weak-Texture Endoscopic Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.17582/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Monocular depth and pose estimation play an important role in the development of colonoscopy-assisted navigation, as they enable improved screening by reducing blind spots, minimizing the risk of missed or recurrent lesions, and lowering the likelihood of incomplete examinations. However, this task remains challenging due to the presence of texture-less surfaces, complex illumination patterns, deformation, and a lack of in-vivo datasets with reliable ground truth. In this paper, we propose **PRISM** (Pose-Refinement with Intrinsic Shading and edge Maps), a self-supervised learning framework that leverages anatomical and illumination priors to guide geometric learning. Our approach uniquely incorporates edge detection and luminance decoupling for structural guidance. Specifically, edge maps are derived using a learning-based edge detector (e.g., DexiNed or HED) trained to capture thin and high-frequency boundaries, while luminance decoupling is obtained through an intrinsic decomposition module that separates shading and reflectance, enabling the model to exploit shading cues for depth estimation. Experimental results on multiple real and synthetic datasets demonstrate state-of-the-art performance. We further conduct a thorough ablation study on training data selection to establish best practices for pose and depth estimation in colonoscopy. This analysis yields two practical insights: (1) self-supervised training on real-world data outperforms supervised training on realistic phantom data, underscoring the superiority of domain realism over ground truth availability; and (2) video frame rate is an extremely important factor for model performance, where dataset-specific video frame sampling is necessary for generating high quality training data.