Monocular depth estimation network with single-pixel depth guidance

Abstract

Due to the scale ambiguity problem, the performance of monocular depth estimation (MDE) is inherently restricted. Multi-camera systems, especially those equipped with active depth cameras, have addressed this problem at the expense of increased hardware costs and space. In this Letter, we adopt a similar but cost-effective solution using only single-pixel depth guidance with a single-photon avalanche diode. To this end, we design a single-pixel guidance module (SPGM) that combines the global information from the single-pixel depth guidance with the spatial information from the image at the feature level. By integrating SPGMs into an MDE network, we introduce PhoMoNet, the first, to the best of our knowledge, end-to-end MDE network with single-pixel depth guidance. Experimental results show the effectiveness and superiority of PhoMoNet over state-of-the-art MDE networks on synthetic and real-world datasets.