# GaussianPile: A Unified Sparse Gaussian Splatting Framework for Slice-based Volumetric Reconstruction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.20611 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.20611/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 28 of its 54 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Mar 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 28 of 28)

- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Implicit Neural Representations with Periodic Activation Functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09661/) (2020)
- [4D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Dynamic Scene Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08528/) (2023)
- [Deformable 3D Gaussians for High-Fidelity Monocular Dynamic Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.13101/) (2023)
- [Mip-Splatting: Alias-free 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16493/) (2023)
- [Compact 3D Gaussian Representation for Radiance Field](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.13681/) (2023)
- [GRM: Large Gaussian Reconstruction Model for Efficient 3D Reconstruction and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14621/) (2024)
- [Text-to-3D using Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16585/) (2023)
- [Compressed 3D Gaussian Splatting for Accelerated Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02436/) (2023)
- [DreamGaussian4D: Generative 4D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.17142/) (2023)
- [Compression Artifacts Reduction by a Deep Convolutional Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1504.06993/) (2015)
- [Gaussian in the Wild: 3D Gaussian Splatting for Unconstrained Image Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15704/) (2024)
- [NAF: Neural Attenuation Fields for Sparse-View CBCT Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14540/) (2022)
- [Improving Inference for Neural Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.04240/) (2020)
- [Structure-Aware Sparse-View X-ray 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.10959/) (2023)
- [3DGS.zip: A survey on 3D Gaussian Splatting Compression Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.09510/) (2024)
- [R2-Gaussian: Rectifying Radiative Gaussian Splatting for Tomographic Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20693/) (2024)
- [Compressive Neural Representations of Volumetric Scalar Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.04523/) (2021)
- [Radiative Gaussian Splatting for Efficient X-ray Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.04116/) (2024)
- [TTHRESH: Tensor Compression for Multidimensional Visual Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.05952/) (2018)
- [DDGS-CT: Direction-Disentangled Gaussian Splatting for Realistic Volume Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.02518/) (2024)
- [CoordX: Accelerating Implicit Neural Representation with a Split MLP Architecture](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.12425/) (2022)
- [A Survey on Error-Bounded Lossy Compression for Scientific Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.02840/) (2024)
- [Compressing 3D Gaussian Splatting by Noise-Substituted Vector Quantization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.03059/) (2025)
- [FruitNinja: 3D Object Interior Texture Generation with Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.12089/) (2024)
- [Tumor Detection, Segmentation and Classification Challenge on Automated 3D Breast Ultrasound: The TDSC-ABUS Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.15588/) (2025)
- [InnerGS: Internal Scenes Reconstruction and Segmentation via Factorized 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.13287/) (2025)

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

- [CellSplat4D: PSF-Aware 4D Gaussian Splatting for Sparse Robotic Live-Cell Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.04199/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Slice-based volumetric imaging is widely applied and it demands representations that compress aggressively while preserving internal structure for analysis. We introduce GaussianPile, unifying 3D Gaussian splatting with an imaging system-aware focus model to address this challenge. Our proposed method introduces three key innovations: (i) a slice-aware piling strategy that positions anisotropic 3D Gaussians to model through-slice contributions, (ii) a differentiable projection operator that encodes the finite-thickness point spread function of the imaging acquisition system, and (iii) a compact encoding and joint optimization pipeline that simultaneously reconstructs and compresses the Gaussian sets. Our CUDA-based design retains the compression and real-time rendering efficiency of Gaussian primitives while preserving high-frequency internal volumetric detail. Experiments on microscopy and ultrasound datasets demonstrate that our method reduces storage and reconstruction cost, sustains diagnostic fidelity, and enables fast 2D visualization, along with 3D voxelization. In practice, it delivers high-quality results in as few as 3 minutes, up to 11x faster than NeRF-based approaches, and achieves consistent 16x compression over voxel grids, offering a practical path to deployable compression and exploration of slice-based volumetric datasets.