# PCFEx: Point Cloud Feature Extraction for Graph Neural Networks

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.08540 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.08540/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 26 of its 53 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Mar 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 26 of 26)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Graph Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10903/) (2017)
- [PointNet: Deep Learning on Point Sets for 3D Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00593/) (2016)
- [PointNet++: Deep Hierarchical Feature Learning on Point Sets in a Metric Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02413/) (2017)
- [ShapeNet: An Information-Rich 3D Model Repository](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03012/) (2015)
- [Fast Graph Representation Learning with PyTorch Geometric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.02428/) (2019)
- [Point Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.00931/) (2020)
- [Deep High-Resolution Representation Learning for Visual Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.07919/) (2019)
- [Spatial Temporal Graph Convolutional Networks for Skeleton-Based Action Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.07455/) (2018)
- [OpenPose: Realtime Multi-Person 2D Pose Estimation using Part Affinity Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.08008/) (2018)
- [Realtime Multi-Person 2D Pose Estimation using Part Affinity Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.08050/) (2016)
- [3D human pose estimation in video with temporal convolutions and semi-supervised training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.11742/) (2018)
- [Integral Human Pose Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.08229/) (2017)
- [HigherHRNet: Scale-Aware Representation Learning for Bottom-Up Human Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10357/) (2019)
- [MotionBERT: A Unified Perspective on Learning Human Motion Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.06551/) (2022)
- [2D/3D Pose Estimation and Action Recognition using Multitask Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.09232/) (2018)
- [Exploiting temporal information for 3D pose estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.08585/) (2017)
- [MM-Fi: Multi-Modal Non-Intrusive 4D Human Dataset for Versatile Wireless Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10345/) (2023)
- [mm-Pose: Real-Time Human Skeletal Posture Estimation using mmWave Radars and CNNs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.09592/) (2019)
- [mRI: Multi-modal 3D Human Pose Estimation Dataset using mmWave, RGB-D, and Inertial Sensors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.08394/) (2022)
- [HuPR: A Benchmark for Human Pose Estimation Using Millimeter Wave Radar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.12564/) (2022)
- [Fast and Scalable Human Pose Estimation using mmWave Point Cloud](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.00097/) (2022)
- [Learnable human mesh triangulation for 3D human pose and shape estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.11251/) (2022)
- [Tesla-Rapture: A Lightweight Gesture Recognition System from mmWave Radar Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.06448/) (2021)
- [Representation learning of vertex heatmaps for 3D human mesh reconstruction from multi-view images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.16615/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Graph neural networks (GNNs) have gained significant attention for their effectiveness across various domains. This study focuses on applying GNN to process 3D point cloud data for human pose estimation (HPE) and human activity recognition (HAR). We propose novel point cloud feature extraction (PCFEx) techniques to capture meaningful information at the point, edge, and graph levels of the point cloud by considering point cloud as a graph. Moreover, we introduce a GNN architecture designed to efficiently process these features. Our approach is evaluated on four most popular publicly available millimeter wave radar datasets, three for HPE and one for HAR. The results show substantial improvements, with significantly reduced errors in all three HPE benchmarks, and an overall accuracy of 98.8% in mmWave-based HAR, outperforming the existing state of the art models. This work demonstrates the great potential of feature extraction incorporated with GNN modeling approach to enhance the precision of point cloud processing.