Underwater images are strongly affected by light attenuation and backscatter, making 3D reconstruction, depth estimation, and novel-view rendering much harder than in air. In this talk, I will present Gaussian Splashing, a method that adapts 3D Gaussian Splatting to underwater scenes by integrating an underwater image-formation model directly into the rendering and optimization pipeline. The method reconstructs underwater scenes in minutes and renders novel views in real time, while improving depth, color reconstruction, and visual detail compared with existing approaches. I will discuss the motivation, the main technical ideas, experimental results, and possible applications in underwater robotics, marine science, and visualization.
Nir Mualem is a researcher at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, working on computer vision, 3D reconstruction, and neural rendering, with a particular interest in imaging and reconstruction under challenging underwater conditions. He is currently also working as a Solution Architect at NVIDIA, focusing on optimization methods.
