# Event Cameras for Melt-Pool Monitoring in Additive Manufacturing: A Benchmark and a Cross-Machine Transfer Analysis

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.06973 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.06973/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 32 of its 81 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Oct 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 32)

- [Shortcut Learning in Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.07780/) (2020)
- [Datasheets for Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.09010/) (2018)
- [WILDS: A Benchmark of in-the-Wild Distribution Shifts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.07421/) (2020)
- [Recognition in Terra Incognita](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.04975/) (2018)
- [Surrogate Gradient Learning in Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.09948/) (2019)
- [Deep Residual Learning in Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.04159/) (2021)
- [Converting Static Image Datasets to Spiking Neuromorphic Datasets Using Saccades](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1507.07629/) (2015)
- [DSEC: A Stereo Event Camera Dataset for Driving Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.06011/) (2021)
- [Going Deeper With Directly-Trained Larger Spiking Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.05280/) (2020)
- [EV-FlowNet: Self-Supervised Optical Flow Estimation for Event-based Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.06898/) (2018)
- [HATS: Histograms of Averaged Time Surfaces for Robust Event-based Object Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.07913/) (2018)
- [End-to-End Learning of Representations for Asynchronous Event-Based Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08245/) (2019)
- [Event-based Vision meets Deep Learning on Steering Prediction for Self-driving Cars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.01310/) (2018)
- [Learning to Detect Objects with a 1 Megapixel Event Camera](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.13436/) (2020)
- [SpikingJelly: An open-source machine learning infrastructure platform for spike-based intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.16620/) (2023)
- [Video to Events: Recycling Video Datasets for Event Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.03095/) (2019)
- [Recurrent Vision Transformers for Object Detection with Event Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.05598/) (2022)
- [Event-based Asynchronous Sparse Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.09148/) (2020)
- [Spike-driven Transformer V2: Meta Spiking Neural Network Architecture Inspiring the Design of Next-generation Neuromorphic Chips](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.03663/) (2024)
- [N-ImageNet: Towards Robust, Fine-Grained Object Recognition with Event Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.01041/) (2021)
- [Recent Event Camera Innovations: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.13627/) (2024)
- [Event Transformer. A sparse-aware solution for efficient event data processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03355/) (2022)
- [V2CE: Video to Continuous Events Simulator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.08891/) (2023)
- [Navigating Shortcuts, Spurious Correlations, and Confounders: From Origins via Detection to Mitigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.05152/) (2024)
- [Shining light on the DVS pixel: A tutorial and discussion about biasing and optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.04706/) (2023)
- [Feedback control of event cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.00409/) (2021)
- [Optimal biasing and physical limits of DVS event noise](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.04019/) (2023)
- [ADV2E: Bridging the Gap Between Analogue Circuit and Discrete Frames in the Video-to-Events Simulator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.12250/) (2024)
- [Statistical quantification of confounding bias in predictive modelling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.00814/) (2021)
- [How Real is CARLAs Dynamic Vision Sensor? A Study on the Sim-to-Real Gap in Traffic Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.13722/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Melt-pool monitoring is central to qualifying metal additive manufacturing (AM), yet no public event-camera benchmark exists for this domain. Event cameras report per-pixel brightness changes with microsecond timing instead of reading full frames, giving the temporal resolution AM transients demand at a fraction of the data rate. We present SynAM-E (Synthetic AM Events), the first public multi-source simulated event-camera benchmark for metal-AM melt-pool monitoring: 85 physics-calibrated event shards from 15 sources across 8 institutions, with public baselines and fixed cross-machine evaluation splits. On a single-machine case study, event-spatial monitoring matches dense-frame accuracy (0.874 versus 0.863 macro-F1), and the absolute intensity that events discard adds only +0.006 under fusion. On the NIST Additive Manufacturing Metrology Testbed (AMMT) build, a near-sensor event-rate counter recovers a raw-frame-confirmed 528.7 Hz intensity oscillation at ~380 times less sensor readout than the frame stream requires. A compact 93 k-parameter spiking model runs at 15 times lower modeled inference energy for a 0.073 macro-F1 cost. Every cross-source task includes a built-in trust test against camera identity shortcuts: process-type classification passes while material classification remains confounded by camera band, a corpus-structural limitation the release documents and the trust test exposes.