WaterClear-GS: Optical-Aware Gaussian Splatting for Underwater Reconstruction and Restoration

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zhang, Xinrui, Wang, Yufeng, Fang, Shuangkang, Wang, Zesheng, Qi, Dacheng, Ding, Wenrui
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Zhang, Xinrui
Wang, Yufeng
Fang, Shuangkang
Wang, Zesheng
Qi, Dacheng
Ding, Wenrui
author_facet Zhang, Xinrui
Wang, Yufeng
Fang, Shuangkang
Wang, Zesheng
Qi, Dacheng
Ding, Wenrui
contents Underwater 3D reconstruction and appearance restoration are hindered by the complex optical properties of water, such as wavelength-dependent attenuation and scattering. Existing Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF)-based methods struggle with slow rendering speeds and suboptimal color restoration, while 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) inherently lacks the capability to model complex volumetric scattering effects. To address these issues, we introduce WaterClear-GS, the first pure 3DGS-based framework that explicitly integrates underwater optical properties of local attenuation and scattering into Gaussian primitives, eliminating the need for an auxiliary medium network. Our method employs a dual-branch optimization strategy to ensure underwater photometric consistency while naturally recovering water-free appearances. This strategy is enhanced by depth-guided geometry regularization and perception-driven image loss, together with exposure constraints, spatially-adaptive regularization, and physically guided spectral regularization, which collectively enforce local 3D coherence and maintain natural visual perception. Experiments on standard benchmarks and our newly collected dataset demonstrate that WaterClear-GS achieves outstanding performance on both novel view synthesis (NVS) and underwater image restoration (UIR) tasks, while maintaining real-time rendering. The code will be available at https://buaaxrzhang.github.io/WaterClear-GS/.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_19753
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle WaterClear-GS: Optical-Aware Gaussian Splatting for Underwater Reconstruction and Restoration
Zhang, Xinrui
Wang, Yufeng
Fang, Shuangkang
Wang, Zesheng
Qi, Dacheng
Ding, Wenrui
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Underwater 3D reconstruction and appearance restoration are hindered by the complex optical properties of water, such as wavelength-dependent attenuation and scattering. Existing Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF)-based methods struggle with slow rendering speeds and suboptimal color restoration, while 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) inherently lacks the capability to model complex volumetric scattering effects. To address these issues, we introduce WaterClear-GS, the first pure 3DGS-based framework that explicitly integrates underwater optical properties of local attenuation and scattering into Gaussian primitives, eliminating the need for an auxiliary medium network. Our method employs a dual-branch optimization strategy to ensure underwater photometric consistency while naturally recovering water-free appearances. This strategy is enhanced by depth-guided geometry regularization and perception-driven image loss, together with exposure constraints, spatially-adaptive regularization, and physically guided spectral regularization, which collectively enforce local 3D coherence and maintain natural visual perception. Experiments on standard benchmarks and our newly collected dataset demonstrate that WaterClear-GS achieves outstanding performance on both novel view synthesis (NVS) and underwater image restoration (UIR) tasks, while maintaining real-time rendering. The code will be available at https://buaaxrzhang.github.io/WaterClear-GS/.
title WaterClear-GS: Optical-Aware Gaussian Splatting for Underwater Reconstruction and Restoration
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.19753