Pixelwise View Selection for Unstructured Multi-View Stereo

Johannes L. SchönbergerEnliang ZhengJan-Michael FrahmM. Pollefeys

article2016ECCV2,922 citations

Presents the dense reconstruction pipeline behind COLMAP, which jointly estimates depth and surface normals using PatchMatch and selects optimal source views at the pixel level through photometric and geometric priors.

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This paper introduces an improved multi-view stereo method that produces accurate, complete three-dimensional scene models from large, unstructured collections of photographs taken under uncontrolled conditions. The work addresses the persistent difficulty of recovering reliable dense geometry when input images vary widely in resolution, illumination, viewpoint, and registration quality, a setting common to crowd-sourced Internet photo collections that now underpin many mapping and visualization applications.

The authors set out to demonstrate that embedding per-pixel surface normals, geometric view-selection priors, bilateral photometric weighting, temporal smoothness on visibility, and a multi-view geometric consistency term inside an existing variational inference framework can simultaneously raise accuracy, completeness, and efficiency over prior art.

They evaluated the approach on standard benchmarks (Middlebury and Strecha) that supply ground-truth geometry and on a world-scale Internet photo collection of roughly 100 million images. Experiments compared full and ablated versions of the algorithm, measured runtime on GPU hardware, and assessed both raw depth maps and the final fused point clouds.

The method ranked first or tied for first on several Middlebury test cases and produced the highest accuracy and completeness scores on the Strecha Fountain and Herzjesu sequences. On the large Internet dataset it generated visually coherent reconstructions of major landmarks while running in roughly four days on a modest multi-GPU workstation. Each added componentnormal estimation, geometric priors, temporal smoothness, bilateral weighting, and geometric consistencymeasurably improved both completeness and outlier rejection, with the combined system yielding essentially outlier-free depth and normal maps that can be fused directly or meshed without further cleaning.

These gains matter because they remove the need for restrictive pre-selection of image clusters or heavy post-processing, thereby making high-quality dense modeling practical for the noisy, heterogeneous data that dominate real-world capture campaigns. The resulting point clouds support immediate meshing, texturing, and downstream tasks such as localization or rendering.

The authors have released the full implementation as part of the open-source COLMAP package, enabling immediate adoption and further experimentation. Additional gains are likely from tighter integration with semantic cues or dynamic scene handling, but the current evidence already shows that the proposed formulation is ready for production use on large unstructured collections. The principal remaining uncertainties concern performance on extremely low-texture or rapidly changing scenes, where the photometric and geometric assumptions may still break down.

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Abstract

This work presents a Multi-View Stereo system for robust and efficient dense modeling from unstructured image collections. Our core contributions are the joint estimation of depth and normal information, pixelwise view selection using photometric and geometric priors, and a multi-view geometric consistency term for the simultaneous refinement and image-based depth and normal fusion. Experiments on benchmarks and large-scale Internet photo collections demonstrate state-of-the-art performance in terms of accuracy, completeness, and efficiency.

Table of Contents

  • 1 Introduction
  • 2 Related Work
  • 3 Review of Joint View Selection and Depth Estimation
  • 4 Algorithm
  • 4.1 Normal Estimation
  • 4.2 Geometric Priors for View Selection
  • 4.3 View Selection Smoothness
  • 4.4 Photometric Consistency
  • 4.5 Geometric Consistency
  • 4.6 Integration
  • 4.7 Filtering and Fusion
  • 5 Experiments
  • 6 Conclusion
  • References

Knowls

  1. Knowl 1 — Joint Depth and Normal Estimation using Slanted-Plane Homography Warping

    model/method

    In multi-view stereo, mapping image patches between a reference view and source views using slanted planes avoids matching distortions for oblique surface structures. Let xlP2x_l \in \mathbb{P}^2 be a homogeneous pixel coordinate in the reference image XrefX^{\text{ref}}, with camera calibration matrix KK. Let θlR+\theta_l \in \mathbb{R}^+ and nlR3n_l \in \mathbb{R}^3 (nl=1\|n_l\| = 1) denote the estimated depth and surface normal at pixel ll, respectively. The 3D point corresponding to xlx_l is pl=θlK1xlp_l = \theta_l K^{-1} x_l, and the orthogonal distance from the reference camera center to the local tangent plane is dl=nlTpld_l = n_l^T p_l.

    For a source image XmX^m with calibration matrix KmK^m and relative rigid transformation (Rm,tm)(R^m, t^m) from the reference frame (where RmSO(3)R^m \in \mathrm{SO}(3) and tmR3t^m \in \mathbb{R}^3), the homography HlH_l induced by the local planar surface is:

    Hl=Km(Rmdl1tmnlT)K1H_l = K^m \left( R^m - d_l^{-1} t^m n_l^T \right) K^{-1}

    The corresponding coordinate in source image mm is xlm=Hlxlx_l^m = H_l x_l.

    Given a sampled subset of non-occluded source views S{1,,M}S \subset \{1, \dots, M\}, the optimal depth θ^lopt\hat{\theta}_l^{\text{opt}} and normal n^lopt\hat{n}_l^{\text{opt}} maximize the multi-view photometric similarity ρlm(θl,nl)\rho_l^m(\theta_l^*, n_l^*) (computed via normalized cross-correlation over the warped patches):

    (θ^lopt,n^lopt)=argminθl,nl1SmS(1ρlm(θl,nl))(\hat{\theta}_l^{\text{opt}}, \hat{n}_l^{\text{opt}}) = \operatorname{argmin}_{\theta_l^*, n_l^*} \frac{1}{|S|} \sum_{m \in S} \left(1 - \rho_l^m(\theta_l^*, n_l^*)\right)

  2. Knowl 2 — PatchMatch Hypothesis Sampling and Propagation for Joint Depth and Normal Search

    algorithm

    To optimize the 3-parameter space per pixel (1 depth parameter and 2 normal angles) while maintaining fast convergence, an augmented PatchMatch propagation and hypothesis sampling scheme is used.

    Input: Current pixel xlx_l, previous pixel estimate (θl1,nl1)(\theta_{l-1}, n_{l-1}), current estimate (θl,nl)(\theta_l, n_l), camera calibration KK, perturbation depth scale ϵ\epsilon, rotation perturbation matrix RϵSO(3)R_\epsilon \in \mathrm{SO}(3)
    Output: Updated best depth and normal (θl,nl)(\theta_l, n_l)
    1. Compute first-order surface propagation depth θl1prp\theta_{l-1}^{\text{prp}} by finding the intersection of the ray through xlx_l (direction K1xlK^{-1} x_l) with the 3D planar surface of the previous pixel (θl1,nl1)(\theta_{l-1}, n_{l-1}):
       pl1=θl1K1xl1p_{l-1} = \theta_{l-1} K^{-1} x_{l-1}
       dl1=nl1Tpl1d_{l-1} = n_{l-1}^T p_{l-1}
       θl1prp=dl1nl1TK1xl\theta_{l-1}^{\text{prp}} = \frac{d_{l-1}}{n_{l-1}^T K^{-1} x_l}
    2. Sample random depth θlrnd\theta_l^{\text{rnd}} uniformly from the depth range and random unit normal nlrndn_l^{\text{rnd}} uniformly on the unit sphere
    3. Generate perturbed hypotheses:
       θlprt{(1+ϵ)θl,(1ϵ)θl}\theta_l^{\text{prt}} \in \{(1 + \epsilon)\theta_l, (1 - \epsilon)\theta_l\}
       nlprt=Rϵnln_l^{\text{prt}} = R_\epsilon n_l, subject to plTnlprt<0p_l^T n_l^{\text{prt}} < 0
    4. Form candidate hypothesis set:
       H={(θl,nl),(θl1prp,nl1),(θlrnd,nl),(θl,nlrnd),(θlrnd,nlrnd),(θlprt,nl),(θl,nlprt)}\mathcal{H} = \{ (\theta_l, n_l), (\theta_{l-1}^{\text{prp}}, n_{l-1}), (\theta_l^{\text{rnd}}, n_l), (\theta_l, n_l^{\text{rnd}}), (\theta_l^{\text{rnd}}, n_l^{\text{rnd}}), (\theta_l^{\text{prt}}, n_l), (\theta_l, n_l^{\text{prt}}) \}
    5. Evaluate the objective 1SmS(1ρlm(θ,n))\frac{1}{|S|} \sum_{m \in S} (1 - \rho_l^m(\theta^*, n^*)) for all candidate pairs in H\mathcal{H}
    6. (θl,nl)argmin(θ,n)H1SmS(1ρlm(θ,n))(\theta_l, n_l) \leftarrow \operatorname{argmin}_{(\theta^*, n^*) \in \mathcal{H}} \frac{1}{|S|} \sum_{m \in S} (1 - \rho_l^m(\theta^*, n^*))

    Decoupling depth and normal perturbations and proposing cross-combinations avoids iterative bisection sweeps while accelerating propagation along smooth 3D surfaces.

  3. Knowl 3 — Geometric Priors for Pixelwise Multi-View Selection

    model/method

    Purely photometric view selection tends to favor near-zero baseline image pairs where depth cannot be reliably triangulated, and neglects relative image resolution or surface viewing angles. Three geometric priors modulate the source view sampling distribution Pl(m)P_l(m) for pixel ll on a per-pixel basis:

    1. Triangulation Prior: Let pl=θlK1xlp_l = \theta_l K^{-1} x_l be the 3D point and cm=(Rm)Ttmc^m = -(R^m)^T t^m the camera center of source view mm. The triangulation angle αlm[0,π)\alpha_l^m \in [0, \pi) is:

    αlm=arccos((plcm)Tplplcmpl)\alpha_l^m = \arccos\left( \frac{(p_l - c^m)^T p_l}{\|p_l - c^m\| \|p_l\|} \right)

    Given an a priori angle threshold αˉ\bar{\alpha} (set to αˉ=1\bar{\alpha} = 1^\circ), the prior likelihood is:

    P(αlm)=1(min(αˉ,αlm)αˉ)2αˉ2P(\alpha_l^m) = 1 - \frac{(\min(\bar{\alpha}, \alpha_l^m) - \bar{\alpha})^2}{\bar{\alpha}^2}

    This assigns low likelihood to source images with triangulation angle below αˉ\bar{\alpha} and uniform likelihood for αlmαˉ\alpha_l^m \ge \bar{\alpha}.

    1. Resolution Prior: Let blb_l and blmb_l^m denote the footprint areas covered by the reference patch and warped source patch, respectively. The relative resolution is βlm=blblmR+\beta_l^m = \frac{b_l}{b_l^m} \in \mathbb{R}^+. The likelihood is:

    P(βlm)=min(βlm,(βlm)1)P(\beta_l^m) = \min\left(\beta_l^m, (\beta_l^m)^{-1}\right)

    which peaks at 1 when patches have identical scale and shape, penalizing over- and undersampling.

    1. Incident Prior: To ensure the surface is oriented toward the camera, the incident angle κlm[0,π)\kappa_l^m \in [0, \pi) between the viewing ray and the normal nlmn_l^m at plp_l is:

    κlm=arccos((plcm)Tnlmplcmnlm)\kappa_l^m = \arccos\left( \frac{(p_l - c^m)^T n_l^m}{\|p_l - c^m\| \|n_l^m\|} \right)

    The likelihood is modeled with Gaussian dispersion σκ=45\sigma_\kappa = 45^\circ:

    P(κlm)=exp((κlm)22σκ2)P(\kappa_l^m) = \exp\left( -\frac{(\kappa_l^m)^2}{2\sigma_\kappa^2} \right)

    Assuming statistical independence, these priors modulate the Monte-Carlo view sampling distribution Pl(m)P_l(m):

    Pl(m)=q(Zlm=1)q(αlm)q(βlm)q(κlm)k=1Mq(Zlk=1)q(αlk)q(βlk)q(κlk)P_l(m) = \frac{q(Z_l^m = 1) q(\alpha_l^m) q(\beta_l^m) q(\kappa_l^m)}{\sum_{k=1}^M q(Z_l^k = 1) q(\alpha_l^k) q(\beta_l^k) q(\kappa_l^k)}

    where q(Zlm=1)q(Z_l^m = 1) is the approximate posterior probability that source view mm observes pixel ll without occlusion.

  4. Knowl 4 — Spatio-Temporal Smoothness for Occlusion Indicator State Transitions

    model/method

    In variational inference for multi-view stereo view selection, binary occlusion indicator variables Zl,tm{0,1}Z_{l,t}^m \in \{0, 1\} (indicating whether pixel ll in the reference image is visible in source image mm at optimization sweep iteration tt) can oscillate between successive alternating 1D scan sweeps (left-to-right, top-to-bottom, etc.), creating striping artifacts.

    To mitigate oscillation, a temporal transition factor between iteration t1t-1 and iteration tt is added to the spatial Markov chain:

    P(Zl,tmZl1,tm,Zl,t1m)=P(Zl,tmZl1,tm)P(Zl,tmZl,t1m)P(Z_{l,t}^m \mid Z_{l-1,t}^m, Z_{l,t-1}^m) = P(Z_{l,t}^m \mid Z_{l-1,t}^m) P(Z_{l,t}^m \mid Z_{l,t-1}^m)

    The spatial transition matrix is parameterized by constant γ\gamma (set to γ=0.999\gamma = 0.999, corresponding to an average of one occlusion state change per 1000 pixels):

    P(Zl,tmZl1,tm)=(γ1γ1γγ)P(Z_{l,t}^m \mid Z_{l-1,t}^m) = \begin{pmatrix} \gamma & 1-\gamma \\ 1-\gamma & \gamma \end{pmatrix}

    The temporal transition matrix enforces increasing stability as optimization progresses from t=1t=1 to t=Tt=T:

    P(Zl,tmZl,t1m)=(λt1λt1λtλt),with λt=t2T+0.5P(Z_{l,t}^m \mid Z_{l,t-1}^m) = \begin{pmatrix} \lambda_t & 1-\lambda_t \\ 1-\lambda_t & \lambda_t \end{pmatrix}, \quad \text{with } \lambda_t = \frac{t}{2T} + 0.5

    Here, λt\lambda_t scales linearly from 0.5+12T0.5 + \frac{1}{2T} to 1.01.0, reducing oscillations and stabilizing the sampled source views.

  5. Knowl 5 — Bilaterally Weighted Normalized Cross-Correlation for Stereo Matching

    model/method

    Standard Normalized Cross-Correlation (NCC) across square patches blurs depth discontinuities across object silhouettes. To preserve sharp boundaries while maintaining robustness to illumination changes, a bilaterally weighted NCC is computed over the reference patch wlw_l centered at xlx_l and the warped source patch wlmw_l^m centered at xlmx_l^m.

    The bilaterally weighted NCC ρlm\rho_l^m is defined as:

    ρlm=covw(wl,wlm)covw(wl,wl)covw(wlm,wlm)\rho_l^m = \frac{\operatorname{cov}_w(w_l, w_l^m)}{\sqrt{\operatorname{cov}_w(w_l, w_l) \operatorname{cov}_w(w_l^m, w_l^m)}}

    where the weighted covariance between two patch vectors xx and yy is:

    covw(x,y)=Ew((xEw(x))(yEw(y)))\operatorname{cov}_w(x, y) = E_w\left( (x - E_w(x))(y - E_w(y)) \right)

    and the weighted expectation is Ew(x)=iwixiiwiE_w(x) = \frac{\sum_i w_i x_i}{\sum_i w_i}.

    Each pixel ii in the local patch has a bilateral weight wiw_i based on grayscale intensity difference Δgi=gigl\Delta g_i = |g_i - g_l| and spatial pixel distance Δxi=xixl\Delta x_i = \|x_i - x_l\|:

    wi=exp(Δgi22σg2Δxi22σx2)w_i = \exp\left( -\frac{\Delta g_i^2}{2\sigma_g^2} - \frac{\Delta x_i^2}{2\sigma_x^2} \right)

    where σg\sigma_g and σx\sigma_x are Gaussian dispersion parameters controlling color and spatial distance scaling.

  6. Knowl 6 — Multi-View Geometric Consistency Cost via Forward-Backward Reprojection

    model/method

    To resolve photometric matching ambiguities in repetitive or low-texture regions during dense reconstruction, a multi-view geometric consistency term is incorporated directly into the energy minimization.

    Let xlx_l be a pixel in reference image XrefX^{\text{ref}} with depth θl\theta_l and normal nln_l, inducing a forward homography HlH_l to source image XmX^m: xlm=Hlxlx_l^m = H_l x_l. Let (θlm,nlm)(\theta_l^m, n_l^m) be the depth and normal in source image XmX^m interpolated at xlmx_l^m, which induces a backward homography HlmH_l^m mapping from source view mm back to the reference image.

    The forward-backward reprojection error is:

    ψlm=xlHlmHlxl\psi_l^m = \|x_l - H_l^m H_l x_l\|

    To handle potential occlusions in the source image during backward mapping, a robustified geometric cost ξlm\xi_l^m combines the photometric correlation ρlm\rho_l^m with a truncated reprojection penalty:

    ξlm(θl,nl)=1ρlm(θl,nl)+ηmin(ψlm,ψmax)\xi_l^m(\theta_l^*, n_l^*) = 1 - \rho_l^m(\theta_l^*, n_l^*) + \eta \min\left( \psi_l^m, \psi_{\max} \right)

    where η=0.5\eta = 0.5 is a regularizer weight and ψmax=3 px\psi_{\max} = 3\text{ px} is the maximum truncation threshold.

    The optimal depth and normal minimizing this cost over the sampled source view subset SS are:

    (θ^lopt,n^lopt)=argminθl,nl1SmSξlm(θl,nl)(\hat{\theta}_l^{\text{opt}}, \hat{n}_l^{\text{opt}}) = \operatorname{argmin}_{\theta_l^*, n_l^*} \frac{1}{|S|} \sum_{m \in S} \xi_l^m(\theta_l^*, n_l^*)

  7. Knowl 7 — Two-Stage Coordinate Descent Optimization for Joint Multi-View Stereo

    algorithm

    Simultaneous multi-view stereo optimization over all images with geometric consistency is decomposed into two Generalized Expectation-Maximization (GEM) stages to manage memory and computational complexity.

    Input: Set of images X={X1,,XM}X = \{X_1, \dots, X_M\} with camera calibrations {Km}\{K_m\} and poses {(Rm,tm)}\{(R_m, t_m)\}
    Output: Estimated depth maps {θm}\{\theta_m\} and normal maps {Nm}\{N_m\} for all images
    Stage 1: Independent Initial Depth and Normal Estimation
    1. for each reference image XmXX_m \in X do
    2. Initialize depth θm\theta_m and normals NmN_m randomly
    3. for sweep = 1 to I1=3I_1 = 3 (interleaving left, right, up, down 1D directions) do
    4. E-step: Infer occlusion posteriors q(Zl,tk)q(Z_{l,t}^k) for source views kmk \neq m via forward-backward message passing with spatio-temporal smoothness
    5. Compute sampling distribution Pl(k)q(Zl,tk=1)q(αlk)q(βlk)q(κlk)P_l(k) \propto q(Z_{l,t}^k = 1) q(\alpha_l^k) q(\beta_l^k) q(\kappa_l^k)
    6. M-step: Update (θl,nl)(\theta_l, n_l) via PatchMatch sampling optimizing the photometric cost:
             (θ^l,n^l)=argminθ,n1SkS(1ρlk(θ,n))(\hat{\theta}_l, \hat{n}_l) = \operatorname{argmin}_{\theta^*, n^*} \frac{1}{|S|} \sum_{k \in S} (1 - \rho_l^k(\theta^*, n^*))
    7. end for
    8. end for
    Stage 2: Multi-View Geometrically Consistent Refinement
    9. for sweep = 1 to I2=2I_2 = 2 do
    10. for each reference image XmXX_m \in X (coordinate descent step) do
    11. E-step: Update occlusion posteriors q(Zl,tk)q(Z_{l,t}^k) via forward-backward algorithm
    12. Compute view sampling distribution Pl(k)P_l(k) using geometric priors and updated posteriors
    13. M-step: Update (θl,nl)(\theta_l, n_l) using PatchMatch sampling minimizing the joint robust cost:
             (θ^l,n^l)=argminθ,n1SkSξlk(θ,n)(\hat{\theta}_l, \hat{n}_l) = \operatorname{argmin}_{\theta^*, n^*} \frac{1}{|S|} \sum_{k \in S} \xi_l^k(\theta^*, n^*)
             where ξlk=1ρlk+ηmin(ψlk,ψmax)\xi_l^k = 1 - \rho_l^k + \eta \min(\psi_l^k, \psi_{\max})
    14. end for
    15. end for

    A full sweep consists of four sequential 1D passes (left-to-right, right-to-left, top-to-bottom, bottom-to-top).

  8. Knowl 8 — Graph-Based Depth and Normal Support Filtering and Point Cloud Fusion

    algorithm

    To prune outliers in untextured areas (e.g., sky) and merge multi-view depth and normal maps into a consistent 3D point cloud, observations are filtered by photometric and geometric support and clustered in a directed graph.

    Input: Depth maps {θm}\{\theta_m\} and normal maps {Nm}\{N_m\}, min support threshold s=3s = 3, reprojection threshold ψˉ\bar{\psi}, relative depth tolerance ϵθ\epsilon_\theta, normal angle tolerance ϵn\epsilon_n
    Output: Fused 3D point cloud with surface normals
    1. For each pixel xlx_l in each image, compute photometric support SlphoS_l^{\text{pho}} and geometric support SlgeoS_l^{\text{geo}}:
       Slpho={xlmq(Zlm)>qˉZ}S_l^{\text{pho}} = \{ x_l^m \mid q(Z_l^m) > \bar{q}_Z \} with qˉZ=0.5\bar{q}_Z = 0.5
       Slgeo={xlmq(αlm)qˉα,q(βlm)qˉβ,q(κlm)>qˉκ,ψlm<ψmax}S_l^{\text{geo}} = \{ x_l^m \mid q(\alpha_l^m) \ge \bar{q}_\alpha, q(\beta_l^m) \ge \bar{q}_\beta, q(\kappa_l^m) > \bar{q}_\kappa, \psi_l^m < \psi_{\max} \}
       with qˉα=1,qˉβ=0.5,qˉκ=P(κ=90),ψmax=3 px\bar{q}_\alpha = 1, \bar{q}_\beta = 0.5, \bar{q}_\kappa = P(\kappa = 90^\circ), \psi_{\max} = 3\text{ px}
    2. Compute effective support Sl=SlphoSlgeoS_l = S_l^{\text{pho}} \cap S_l^{\text{geo}}
    3. Filter out all pixels where Sl<s|S_l| < s (s=3s = 3)
    4. Build directed graph G=(V,E)G = (V, E) where nodes VV are unfiltered pixels and directed edges EE point from reference pixels to supported source pixels
    5. while GG is not empty do
    6. Find unclustered node v0Vv_0 \in V with maximum support Sv0|S_{v_0}|
    7. Initialize cluster C={v0}C = \{v_0\}
    8. Project v0v_0 into 3D to get point p0p_0 and normal n0n_0
    9. Recursively find connected nodes viVv_i \in V satisfying:
          a. Depth consistency: θ~0θiθ~0<ϵθ\frac{|\tilde{\theta}_0 - \theta_i|}{\tilde{\theta}_0} < \epsilon_\theta, where θ~0\tilde{\theta}_0 is the projected depth of p0p_0 into camera ii
          b. Normal consistency: 1n0Tni<ϵn1 - n_0^T n_i < \epsilon_n
          c. Reprojection consistency: reprojection error ψi\psi_i of p0p_0 in camera ii satisfies ψi<ψˉ\psi_i < \bar{\psi}
          Add matching nodes viv_i to CC (each node collected at most once)
    10. if C3|C| \ge 3 then
    11. Fused position p^=median({piviC})\hat{p} = \operatorname{median}(\{p_i \mid v_i \in C\})
    12. Fused normal n^=viCniviCni\hat{n} = \frac{\sum_{v_i \in C} n_i}{\|\sum_{v_i \in C} n_i\|}
    13. Add (p^,n^)(\hat{p}, \hat{n}) to output point cloud
    14. end if
    15. Remove all nodes in CC from GG
    16. end while

    Using the median 3D position prevents averaging artifacts across geometric depth discontinuities.

  9. Knowl 9 — Strecha Benchmark Reconstruction Accuracy and Component Ablation

    data/table

    The multi-view stereo system with pixelwise view selection was evaluated on the high-resolution Strecha benchmark datasets (Fountain and Herzjesu). Performance is measured as the fraction of reconstructed depth map pixels with absolute error below 2 cm and below 10 cm against laser-scanned ground truth.

    An ablation study isolates the contribution of each component by omitting surface normal estimation (\N\backslash\text{N}), geometric view selection priors (\P\backslash\text{P}), temporal view selection smoothness (\S\backslash\text{S}), bilateral NCC (\B\backslash\text{B}), simultaneous geometric priors, temporal smoothness, and bilateral NCC (\PSB\backslash\text{PSB}), and multi-view geometric consistency (\G\backslash\text{G}), alongside published state-of-the-art baselines.

    Dataset Error Zheng [14] Hu [60] Furukawa [9] Zaharescu [62] Tylecek [61] Jancosek [28] Galliani [15] \\backslashN \\backslashP \\backslashS \\backslashB \\backslashPSB \\backslashG Ours
    Fountain <2cm<2\text{cm} 0.769 0.754 0.731 0.712 0.732 0.824 0.693 0.799 0.824 0.825 0.826 0.817 0.804 0.827
    <10cm<10\text{cm} 0.929 0.930 0.838 0.832 0.822 0.973 0.838 0.937 0.972 0.973 0.973 0.965 0.949 0.975
    Herzjesu <2cm<2\text{cm} 0.650 0.649 0.646 0.220 0.658 0.739 0.283 0.673 0.686 0.688 0.690 0.688 0.679 0.691
    <10cm<10\text{cm} 0.844 0.848 0.836 0.501 0.852 0.923 0.455 0.901 0.928 0.927 0.929 0.921 0.907 0.931

    The data demonstrate that:

    1. Removing normal estimation (\N\backslash\text{N}) or geometric consistency (\G\backslash\text{G}) causes the largest drops in accuracy (<2cm<2\text{cm}) and completeness (<10cm<10\text{cm}).
    2. The full pipeline achieves top accuracy and completeness on Fountain (82.7%82.7\% at <2cm<2\text{cm}, 97.5%97.5\% at <10cm<10\text{cm}) and highest completeness on Herzjesu (93.1%93.1\% at <10cm<10\text{cm}) directly on raw depth maps.

Coverage note — High-level benchmark ranking summaries on the Middlebury dataset and macroscopic runtime figures for large-scale Internet photo collections were omitted as they represent high-level evaluations rather than self-contained algorithmic or theoretical mechanisms.

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Citation

MLA
Schönberger, J. L., et al. “Pixelwise View Selection for Unstructured Multi-View Stereo”. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer International Publishing, 2016, pp. 501–18, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46487-9_31.
APA
Schönberger, J. L., Zheng, E., Frahm, J.-M., & Pollefeys, M. (2016). Pixelwise View Selection for Unstructured Multi-View Stereo. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science (pp. 501–518). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46487-9_31
Chicago
Schönberger, J. L., E. Zheng, J.-M. Frahm, and M. Pollefeys. 2016. “Pixelwise View Selection for Unstructured Multi-View Stereo”. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46487-9_31.
Harvard
Schönberger, J.L. et al. (2016) “Pixelwise View Selection for Unstructured Multi-View Stereo”, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer International Publishing, pp. 501–518. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46487-9_31.
Vancouver
1. Schönberger JL, Zheng E, Frahm J-M, Pollefeys M (2016) Pixelwise View Selection for Unstructured Multi-View Stereo. In: Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer International Publishing, pp 501–518

BibTeX

@inbook{Sch_nberger_2016, title={Pixelwise View Selection for Unstructured Multi-View Stereo}, ISBN={9783319464879}, ISSN={1611-3349}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46487-9_31}, DOI={10.1007/978-3-319-46487-9_31}, booktitle={Computer Vision – ECCV 2016}, publisher={Springer International Publishing}, author={Schönberger, Johannes L. and Zheng, Enliang and Frahm, Jan-Michael and Pollefeys, Marc}, year={2016}, pages={501–518} }
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