# Repurposing RGB-based Foundation Model for Depth Estimation on Thermal Images Using Hierarchical Supervision

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.11564 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.11564/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 30 of its 42 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Aug 2026.

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

- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07193/) (2023)
- [Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14294/) (2021)
- [Depth Anything V2](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09414/) (2024)
- [DINOv3](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.10104/) (2025)
- [Depth Anything: Unleashing the Power of Large-Scale Unlabeled Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.10891/) (2024)
- [Depth Map Prediction from a Single Image using a Multi-Scale Deep Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.2283/) (2014)
- [Deep Ordinal Regression Network for Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.02446/) (2018)
- [ZoeDepth: Zero-shot Transfer by Combining Relative and Metric Depth](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.12288/) (2023)
- [AdaBins: Depth Estimation using Adaptive Bins](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.14141/) (2020)
- [Pseudo-LiDAR from Visual Depth Estimation: Bridging the Gap in 3D Object Detection for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.07179/) (2018)
- [From Big to Small: Multi-Scale Local Planar Guidance for Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.10326/) (2019)
- [Repurposing Diffusion-Based Image Generators for Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02145/) (2023)
- [Enforcing geometric constraints of virtual normal for depth prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.12209/) (2019)
- [BinsFormer: Revisiting Adaptive Bins for Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.00987/) (2022)
- [NeW CRFs: Neural Window Fully-connected CRFs for Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.01502/) (2022)
- [FastDepth: Fast Monocular Depth Estimation on Embedded Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.03273/) (2019)
- [NDDepth: Normal-Distance Assisted Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.10592/) (2023)
- [GEDepth: Ground Embedding for Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.09975/) (2023)
- [D3T: Distinctive Dual-Domain Teacher Zigzagging Across RGB-Thermal Gap for Domain-Adaptive Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.09359/) (2024)
- [M-SpecGene: Generalized Foundation Model for RGBT Multispectral Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.16318/) (2025)
- [Efficient and accurate object detection with simultaneous classification and tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.02065/) (2020)
- [Real-time 3D object proposal generation and classification under limited processing resources](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.10670/) (2020)
- [MonoTher-Depth: Enhancing Thermal Depth Estimation via Confidence-Aware Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.16127/) (2025)
- [Deep Depth Estimation from Thermal Image: Dataset, Benchmark, and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.22060/) (2025)
- [Enhancing Features in Long-tailed Data Using Large Vision Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.10852/) (2025)
- [ThermoStereoRT: Thermal Stereo Matching in Real Time via Knowledge Distillation and Attention-based Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.07418/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Depth estimation from thermal images is highly valuable for robotic applications in adverse conditions, such as nighttime and rainy weather. Recent studies have sought to transfer knowledge from RGB-based foundation models to thermal modalities, yet the rich hierarchical representations these models encode remain underutilized. To address this limitation, we propose RGB-HS, a novel framework for thermal-image depth estimation that leverages hierarchical supervision from an RGB-based foundation model. Specifically, we first replace the baseline thermal encoder with a foundational model and introduce a parallel RGB branch that also employs a foundational model as an encoder of the same architecture, taking RGB images as input. The alignment is then performed across multiple levels between the tokens of the two encoders, allowing the thermal student branch to capture both structural precision and semantic abstraction from the RGB teacher branch. Furthermore, we introduce verification to refine the alignment process by weighting tokens from the RGB branch based on RGB image quality. Extensive experiments on the popular benchmark demonstrate that RGB-HS achieves competitive performance and more effectively exploits the representational capacity of RGB-based foundation models for depth estimation on thermal images.