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Articles | Volume XLVIII-2/W10-2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLVIII-2-W10-2025-271-2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLVIII-2-W10-2025-271-2025
07 Jul 2025
 | 07 Jul 2025

Simulation and validation of underwater scenes for two-media optical 3D reconstruction

Frederik Schulte, Markus Brezovsky, Anatol Günthner, Boris Jutzi, Gottfried Mandlburger, and Lukas Winiwarter

Keywords: Simulation, multimedia photogrammetry, ray tracing, validation

Abstract. Optical 3D reconstruction in environments with complex light paths such as water-air surface interactions continues to be challenging, particularly due to the inherent refraction effects. These effects compromise assumptions taken in standard photogrammetric methods like the traditional Multi-View Stereo and newer approaches like Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs). Addressing these limitations is critical for monitoring coastal and riparian ecosystems, for flood-risk modeling, as climate change intensifies river flooding, and in general to satisfy increasing demands for 3D topo-bathymetric data. To evaluate models explicitly built to consider a change in refractivity along the image ray, simulation can be employed. In this study, we present a simulation and validation framework designed to investigate these challenges by synthesizing controlled water scenes with artificial camera trajectories and evaluating them with 2D and 3D (Cloud-to-Mesh, completeness) metrics. For that, a total of 130 images with a resolution of 1024 × 768 pixels were simulated to model both a water-free scene and a submerged scene. The results indicate that refractive effects must be explicitly accounted for, as a water depth of 3.5 m led to errors on the order of 1 m, when refraction was not taken into account. Furthermore, NeRFs proved to be particularly well suited for 3D analysis of photo-bathymetric surveys, achieving a completeness that was 21 % higher than conventional MVS methods. The simulation workflow is particularly beneficial for the development and testing of specialized NeRF-variants designed to better account for the complexities introduced by refraction at air-water interface.

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