# 2D GauSS-MI: Efficient Active Scene Reconstruction with Balanced Visual and Geometric Quality

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.21516 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.21516/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 17 of its 24 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Sep 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Habitat: A Platform for Embodied AI Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.01201/) (2019)
- [2D Gaussian Splatting for Geometrically Accurate Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17888/) (2024)
- [The Replica Dataset: A Digital Replica of Indoor Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.05797/) (2019)
- [High-quality Surface Reconstruction using Gaussian Surfels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.17774/) (2024)
- [ActiveNeRF: Learning where to See with Uncertainty Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.08546/) (2022)
- [NeurAR: Neural Uncertainty for Autonomous 3D Reconstruction with Implicit Neural Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.10985/) (2022)
- [ActiveGS: Active Scene Reconstruction Using Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.17769/) (2024)
- [ActiveSplat: High-Fidelity Scene Reconstruction through Active Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.21955/) (2024)
- [Active Implicit Object Reconstruction using Uncertainty-guided Next-Best-View Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.16739/) (2023)
- [GauSS-MI: Gaussian Splatting Shannon Mutual Information for Active 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.21067/) (2025)
- [FALCON: Fast Autonomous Aerial Exploration using Coverage Path Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.00577/) (2024)
- [FSMI: Fast computation of Shannon Mutual Information for information-theoretic mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02238/) (2019)
- [Auto3R: Automated 3D Reconstruction and Scanning via Data-driven Uncertainty Quantification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.04528/) (2025)
- [Globally Consistent RGB-D SLAM with 2D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.00970/) (2025)
- [SA-ResGS: Self-Augmented Residual 3D Gaussian Splatting for Next Best View Selection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.03024/) (2026)
- [ObjSplat: Geometry-Aware Gaussian Surfels for Active Object Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.06997/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Active reconstruction requires efficient active view selection to achieve high-quality reconstruction within limited onboard computational resources. Existing methods face challenges in adequately balancing visual and geometric quality with the computational efficiency required for real-time operation. In this work, we present an active reconstruction framework based on 2D Gaussian Splatting (2DGS). We develop an efficient online 2DGS mapping pipeline for incremental RGB-D observations and introduce a probabilistic reliability model that characterizes the view-dependent reconstruction quality of individual 2D Gaussian splats. Building on this model, we formulate 2D Gaussian Splatting Shannon Mutual Information (2D GauSS-MI), a mutual-information-based metric that exploits the explicit surface orientation of 2DGS to evaluate the expected information gain of candidate views. The proposed metric enables active view selection to account for both visual and geometric reconstruction quality. We evaluate the proposed system against three state-of-the-art baselines on eight Replica scenes. Experimental results demonstrate that our method achieves a favorable balance between visual and geometric reconstruction quality with substantially lower computational cost and competitive model storage.