# Gaussian Light Field Splatting: A Physical Prior-Driven Vision Transformer for Unsupervised Low-Light Image Enhancement

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.17985 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.17985/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 43 of its 55 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Jun 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 43)

- [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)
- [2D Gaussian Splatting for Geometrically Accurate Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17888/) (2024)
- [Deep Retinex Decomposition for Low-Light Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.04560/) (2018)
- [Zero-Reference Deep Curve Estimation for Low-Light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.06826/) (2020)
- [EnlightenGAN: Deep Light Enhancement without Paired Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.06972/) (2019)
- [DrivingGaussian: Composite Gaussian Splatting for Surrounding Dynamic Autonomous Driving Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.07920/) (2023)
- [Retinex-inspired Unrolling with Cooperative Prior Architecture Search for Low-light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.05609/) (2020)
- [GaussianDreamer: Fast Generation from Text to 3D Gaussians by Bridging 2D and 3D Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08529/) (2023)
- [Street Gaussians: Modeling Dynamic Urban Scenes with Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.01339/) (2024)
- [GaussianPro: 3D Gaussian Splatting with Progressive Propagation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14650/) (2024)
- [Learning to Enhance Low-Light Image via Zero-Reference Deep Curve Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00860/) (2021)
- [CityGaussian: Real-time High-quality Large-Scale Scene Rendering with Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01133/) (2024)
- [Low-Light Image and Video Enhancement Using Deep Learning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10729/) (2021)
- [Periodic Vibration Gaussian: Dynamic Urban Scene Reconstruction and Real-time Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18561/) (2023)
- [DriveDreamer4D: World Models Are Effective Data Machines for 4D Driving Scene Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13571/) (2024)
- [R2RNet: Low-light Image Enhancement via Real-low to Real-normal Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.14501/) (2021)
- [GaussianImage: 1000 FPS Image Representation and Compression by 2D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.08551/) (2024)
- [Speedy-Splat: Fast 3D Gaussian Splatting with Sparse Pixels and Sparse Primitives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.00578/) (2024)
- [Implicit Neural Representation for Cooperative Low-light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11722/) (2023)
- [ReconDreamer: Crafting World Models for Driving Scene Reconstruction via Online Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.19548/) (2024)
- [MVSGaussian: Fast Generalizable Gaussian Splatting Reconstruction from Multi-View Stereo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.12218/) (2024)
- [LightenDiffusion: Unsupervised Low-Light Image Enhancement with Latent-Retinex Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.08939/) (2024)
- [Adaptive Unfolding Total Variation Network for Low-Light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.00984/) (2021)
- [MambaLLIE: Implicit Retinex-Aware Low Light Enhancement with Global-then-Local State Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.16105/) (2024)
- [GaussianSR: High Fidelity 2D Gaussian Splatting for Arbitrary-Scale Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.18046/) (2024)
- [Momentum-GS: Momentum Gaussian Self-Distillation for High-Quality Large Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04887/) (2024)
- [Large Images are Gaussians: High-Quality Large Image Representation with Levels of 2D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.09039/) (2025)
- [Fast Context-Based Low-Light Image Enhancement via Neural Implicit Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12511/) (2024)
- [Instant GaussianImage: A Generalizable and Self-Adaptive Image Representation via 2D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.23479/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Existing unsupervised low-light image enhancement methods often encounter local exposure imbalance and color distortion under complex non-uniform illumination. In addition, most Vision Transformers lack an explicit mechanism for modeling the physical priors of illumination degradation. To address these limitations, we propose GLFS, a Gaussian light field splatting-based Vision Transformer that integrates continuous physical illumination modeling from Gaussian splatting into the Transformer architecture. In GLFS, scene illumination is represented by a superposition of anisotropic Gaussian basis functions. Physics-guided biases are introduced into self-attention to adaptively infer a spatial gain field, enabling accurate and uniform restoration under complex illumination. To reduce color bias and structural degradation during enhancement, a color-vector angular loss and a luminance-edge loss are further developed. These losses enforce hue consistency and improve the structural fidelity of local details. Extensive ablation studies and quantitative evaluations show that GLFS provides clear advantages in illumination correction and detail preservation. It achieves state-of-the-art performance and offers a new representation paradigm for low-light image enhancement.