3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) has recently enabled highly photorealistic 3D reconstruction from casually captured multi-view images. However, this accessibility raises a privacy concern: publicly available images or videos can be exploited to reconstruct detailed 3D models of scenes or objects without the owner's consent. We present PatchPoison, a lightweight dataset-poisoning method that prevents unauthorized 3D reconstruction. Unlike global perturbations, PatchPoison injects a small high-frequency adversarial patch, a structured checkerboard, into the periphery of each image in a multi-view dataset. The patch is designed to corrupt the feature-matching stage of Structure-from-Motion (SfM) pipelines such as COLMAP by introducing spurious correspondences that systematically misalign estimated camera poses. Consequently, downstream 3DGS optimization diverges from the correct scene geometry. On the NeRF-Synthetic benchmark, inserting a 12 X 12 pixel patch increases reconstruction error by 6.8x in LPIPS, while the poisoned images remain unobtrusive to human viewers. PatchPoison requires no pipeline modifications, offering a practical, "drop-in" preprocessing step for content creators to protect their multi-view data.
Figures & tables
Figure 2: PatchPoison pipeline. A small high-frequency patch inserted into each image induces spurious feature correspondences during Structure-from-Motion, leading to incorrect camera pose estimation and degraded 3D Gaussian Splatting reconstruction.
Figure 3: Qualitative evaluation on the NeRF-Synthetic dataset. These renders are generated from the poisoned images, illustrating the structural degradation and severe visual artifacts introduced by the PatchPoison attack across multiple views. We omit views that resulted in entirely black renders, which constituted the majority of the overall outputs.
Patch Size
Poisoned vs Render
Poisoned vs Original
SSIM ↓
PSNR ↓
LPIPS ↑
SSIM ↑
PSNR ↑
LPIPS ↓
clean
0.969 ± 0.026
32.96 ± 3.26
0.050 ± 0.035
1.000
inf
0.000
12
0.793 ± 0.106
18.06 ± 5.82
0.336 ± 0.147
0.9996
39.03
0.0016
24
0.798 ± 0.110
18.32 ± 5.82
0.322 ± 0.155
0.9988
33.47
0.0036
48
0.775 ± 0.091
16.91 ± 3.06
0.354 ± 0.121
0.9958
27.45
0.0083
76
0.809 ± 0.101
17.42 ± 4.80
0.302 ± 0.165
0.9900
23.44
0.0163
Table 1: Reconstruction Degradation and Imperceptibility for different scenes in the NeRF-Synthetic dataset with different sizes of adversarial patch.
Poisoned vs Render
Poisoned vs Original
Scene
SSIM ↑
PSNR ↑
LPIPS ↓
SSIM ↓
PSNR ↓
LPIPS ↑
Clean Baseline
chair
0.990 ± 0.000
33.54 ± 0.00
0.023 ± 0.000
1.000
inf
0.000
drums
0.966 ± 0.000
27.91 ± 0.00
0.057 ± 0.000
1.000
inf
0.000
ficus
0.993 ± 0.000
35.90 ± 0.10
0.010 ± 0.000
1.000
inf
0.000
hotdog
0.989 ± 0.000
37.58 ± 0.01
0.025 ± 0.000
1.000
inf
0.000
Table 2: Per-scene reconstruction and imperceptibility metrics on NeRF-Synthetic, comparing clean and poisoned data (patch size 100) over 3 runs.
Block Size
Poisoned vs Render
Poisoned vs Original
SSIM ↓
PSNR ↓
LPIPS ↑
SSIM ↑
PSNR ↑
LPIPS ↓
clean
0.969 ± 0.026
32.97 ± 3.26
0.050 ± 0.035
1.000
inf
0.000
1
0.952 ± 0.029
20.63 ± 0.34
0.073 ± 0.038
0.983
21.07
0.022
2
0.953 ± 0.027
20.62 ± 0.32
0.080 ± 0.035
0.983
21.07
0.031
4
0.788 ± 0.106
16.75 ± 4.54
0.342 ± 0.154
0.983
21.07
0.026
6
0.751 ± 0.068
14.66 ± 3.14
0.398 ± 0.096
0.983
21.07
0.025
Table 3: Reconstruction degradation and imperceptibility across different checkerboard block sizes (frequency of the pattern) for NeRF-Synthetic Dataset.
Variant
Poisoned vs Render
Poisoned vs Original
SSIM ↑
PSNR ↑
LPIPS ↓
SSIM ↓
PSNR ↓
LPIPS ↑
All Patterns
0.822 ± 0.053
18.97 ± 1.96
0.294 ± 0.074
0.983
21.23
0.026
Checkerboard + Circles
0.809 ± 0.088
17.98 ± 3.10
0.304 ± 0.132
0.983
21.02
0.027
Checkerboard + Diagonal Lines
0.820 ± 0.078
18.49 ± 1.82
0.291 ± 0.113
0.983
21.29
0.026
Checkerboard Only
0.801 ± 0.094
16.91 ± 3.53
0.324 ± 0.146
0.983
21.07
0.026
Circles Only
0.878 ± 0.115
23.89 ± 6.66
0.190 ± 0.155
0.996
33.50
0.016
Table 4: Reconstruction quality and imperceptibility across different synthetic patterns variants on NeRF-Synthetic scenes.
Figure 4: Examples of synthetic pattern variants evaluated.
Alpha
Poisoned vs Render
Poisoned vs Original
SSIM ↓
PSNR ↓
LPIPS ↑
SSIM ↑
PSNR ↑
LPIPS ↓
clean
0.969 ± 0.026
32.97 ± 3.26
0.050 ± 0.035
1.000
inf
0.000
0.001
0.970 ± 0.029
33.26 ± 3.67
0.050 ± 0.039
1.000
inf
0.000
0.1
0.783 ± 0.073
17.49 ± 2.48
0.349 ± 0.096
0.984
40.89
0.015
0.25
0.774 ± 0.070
16.57 ± 3.49
0.364 ± 0.097
0.984
33.07
0.019
0.5
0.770 ± 0.064
16.37 ± 3.47
0.374 ± 0.088
0.983
27.05
0.023
Table 5: Reconstruction quality and imperceptibility across different transparency value for the data on NeRF-Synthetic scenes, reported as mean ± std across scenes.
White
Poisoned vs Render
Poisoned vs Original
SSIM ↓
PSNR ↓
LPIPS ↑
SSIM ↑
PSNR ↑
LPIPS ↓
clean
0.969 ± 0.026
32.97 ± 3.26
0.050 ± 0.035
1.000
inf
0.000
5
0.964 ± 0.028
33.41 ± 3.54
0.050 ± 0.038
0.992
55.11
0.003
10
0.958 ± 0.029
33.43 ± 4.22
0.056 ± 0.040
0.987
49.15
0.008
25
0.795 ± 0.104
18.62 ± 5.28
0.331 ± 0.152
0.984
41.23
0.014
50
0.781 ± 0.073
17.18 ± 3.54
0.357 ± 0.102
0.984
35.22
0.018
Table 6: Reconstruction quality and imperceptibility across different white values which represents the color difference between the checkerboard pattern for NeRF-Synthetic scenes.
Poison (%)
Poisoned vs Render
Poisoned vs Original
SSIM ↓
PSNR ↓
LPIPS ↑
SSIM ↑
PSNR ↑
LPIPS ↓
clean
0.969 ± 0.026
32.97 ± 3.26
0.050 ± 0.035
1.000
inf
0.000
5
0.967 ± 0.028
32.08 ± 3.15
0.054 ± 0.038
0.9992
inf
0.0013
10
0.937 ± 0.095
29.68 ± 7.85
0.106 ± 0.167
0.9983
inf
0.0026
25
0.857 ± 0.138
22.47 ± 6.11
0.222 ± 0.198
0.9958
inf
0.0065
50
0.762 ± 0.082
15.16 ± 3.68
0.386 ± 0.096
0.9915
inf
0.0129
Table 7: Reconstruction quality and imperceptibility under varying poisoning levels with limited training data on NeRF-Synthetic scenes, reported as mean ± std across scenes.
Kernel Size
Poisoned vs Render
Poisoned vs Original
SSIM ↑
PSNR ↑
LPIPS ↓
SSIM ↓
PSNR ↓
LPIPS ↑
3
0.980 ± 0.017
37.45 ± 5.14
0.031 ± 0.025
0.978
33.76
0.069
7
0.987 ± 0.011
40.60 ± 5.57
0.022 ± 0.020
0.940
29.91
0.149
11
0.991 ± 0.010
43.83 ± 7.19
0.016 ± 0.020
0.913
28.29
0.190
21
0.998 ± 0.001
48.21 ± 5.94
0.006 ± 0.010
0.857
25.87
0.265
Table 8: Reconstruction quality and imperceptibility across different Gaussian blur kernel sizes for NeRF-Synthetic scenes. Values represent mean ± std across scenes.
Stddev
# of scenes
Poisoned vs Render
Poisoned vs Original
SSIM ↑
PSNR ↑
LPIPS ↓
SSIM ↓
PSNR ↓
LPIPS ↑
5
8
0.851 ± 0.027
31.48 ± 2.44
0.151 ± 0.029
0.691
36.57
0.105
10
8
0.649 ± 0.029
28.57 ± 1.34
0.351 ± 0.029
0.372
30.39
0.316
25
7
0.321 ± 0.044
22.86 ± 0.93
0.599 ± 0.094
0.133
22.36
0.647
50
4
0.260 ± 0.207
17.68 ± 1.43
0.686 ± 0.346
0.070
16.49
0.895
Table 9: Reconstruction quality and imperceptibility across different Gaussian noise standard deviations for NeRF-Synthetic scenes. Values represent mean ± std across scenes.
Transform
# of scenes
Poisoned vs Render
Poisoned vs Original
SSIM ↑
PSNR ↑
LPIPS ↓
SSIM ↓
PSNR ↓
LPIPS ↑
Rotation ( 15∘ )
8
0.974 ± 0.023
34.88 ± 4.46
0.045 ± 0.033
0.732
15.33
0.288
Rotation ( 30∘ )
8
0.978 ± 0.021
35.82 ± 4.03
0.038 ± 0.029
0.690
14.01
0.369
Rotation ( 45∘ )
8
0.972 ± 0.023
34.39 ± 4.22
0.046 ± 0.033
0.666
13.42
0.411
Random Rotation ( ±45∘ )
8
0.972 ± 0.024
34.53 ± 4.39
0.047 ± 0.034
0.724
15.33
0.300
Shear X ( 0.2 )
8
0.923 ± 0.061
28.25 ± 7.38
0.110 ± 0.076
0.699
14.45
0.339
Table 10: Reconstruction quality and imperceptibility across different geometric transformations for NeRF-Synthetic scenes. Values represent mean ± std across scenes.
Quality
Poisoned vs Render
Poisoned vs Original
SSIM ↑
PSNR ↑
LPIPS ↓
SSIM ↓
PSNR ↓
LPIPS ↑
10
0.958 ± 0.024
33.39 ± 2.97
0.070 ± 0.056
0.920
30.08
0.093
25
0.959 ± 0.023
32.70 ± 2.61
0.058 ± 0.032
0.945
32.61
0.046
50
0.961 ± 0.025
32.86 ± 3.52
0.054 ± 0.033
0.958
34.63
0.025
75
0.963 ± 0.026
32.26 ± 2.97
0.055 ± 0.037
0.969
36.96
0.012
Table 11: Reconstruction quality and imperceptibility across different JPEG compression quality levels for NeRF-Synthetic scenes. Values represent mean ± std across scenes.
Figure 5: Trade-off between reconstruction degradation and imperceptibility. An effective method should lie in the bottom-right region. PatchPoison achieves this optimal balance, while baselines either fail to degrade reconstruction or introduce visible artifacts.
Patch
Poisoned vs Render
GT vs Poisoned
SSIM ↑
PSNR ↑
LPIPS ↓
SSIM ↓
PSNR ↓
LPIPS ↑
2%
0.923 ± 0.035
30.57 ± 1.66
0.119 ± 0.039
0.982
36.37
0.008
6%
0.878 ± 0.104
25.75 ± 2.05
0.164 ± 0.103
0.979
27.44
0.014
12.5%
0.876 ± 0.076
21.50 ± 0.99
0.161 ± 0.069
0.961
21.10
0.034
25%
0.752 ± 0.204
15.58 ± 1.88
0.309 ± 0.286
0.893
15.07
0.110
Table 12: Reconstruction quality and imperceptibility aggregated across scenes for different patch sizes in terms of % of the width of the image. Values represent mean ± std across scenes in the MIP-360 dataset.
Figure 6: Results on Mip-NeRF 360 scenes. In structured scenes such as bicycle , PatchPoison introduces visible distortions. In complex natural scenes such as garden , the patch blends into the background, reducing visual artifacts while still increasing reconstruction error.
Poisoning input views of 3D reconstruction systems has been recently studied. However, we identify that existing studies simply backpropagate adversarial gradients through the 3D reconstruction pipeline as a whole, without uncovering the new vulnerability rooted in specific modules of the 3D reconstruction pipeline. In this paper, we argue that the structure-from-motion (SfM) initialization, as the geometric core of many widely used reconstruction systems, can be targeted to achieve transferable poisoning effects across diverse 3D reconstruction systems. To this end, we propose PoInit-of-View, which optimizes adversarial perturbations to intentionally introduce cross-view gradient inconsistencies at projections of corresponding 3D points. These inconsistencies disrupt keypoint detection and feature matching, thereby corrupting pose estimation and triangulation within SfM, eventually resulting in low-quality rendered views. We also provide a theoretical analysis that connects cross-view inconsistency to correspondence collapse. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our PoInit-of-View on diverse 3D reconstruction systems and datasets, surpassing the single-view baseline by 25.1% in PSNR and 16.5% in SSIM in black-box transfer settings, such as 3DGS to NeRF.
Weijie Wang, Songlong Xing, Zhengyu Zhao +2
University of Trento, Italy · Xi’an Jiaotong University, China · Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy
3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) delivers high-fidelity real-time rendering but suffers from geometric and photometric degradations under sparse-view constraints. Current generative restoration approaches are often limited by insufficient temporal coherence, a lack of explicit spatial constraints, and a lack of large-scale training data, resulting in multi-view inconsistencies, erroneous geometric hallucinations, and limited generalization to diverse real-world artifact distributions. In this paper, we present ArtifactWorld, a framework that resolves 3DGS artifact repair through systematic data expansion and a homogeneous dual-model paradigm. To address the data bottleneck, we establish a fine-grained phenomenological taxonomy of 3DGS artifacts and construct a comprehensive training set of 107.5K diverse paired video clips to enhance model robustness. Architecturally, we unify the restoration process within a video diffusion backbone, utilizing an isomorphic predictor to localize structural defects via an artifact heatmap. This heatmap then guides the restoration through an Artifact-Aware Triplet Fusion mechanism, enabling precise, intensity-guided spatio-temporal repair within native self-attention. Extensive experiments demonstrate that ArtifactWorld achieves state-of-the-art performance in sparse novel view synthesis and robust 3D reconstruction. Code available at: https://github.com/fyting/ArtifactWorld.
A pretrained 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) reconstruction can reproduce its capture views well while retaining off-object structure that becomes visible under reframing. We present CleanGS, a post-hoc cleanup method that removes such structure without retraining the underlying representation. Given calibrated views and binary target masks, CleanGS scores candidate three-view subsets using mask reliability, camera baseline, viewing-direction diversity, and complementary sparse 3D support. Rather than collapsing these objectives a priori, it computes the exact Pareto front over subsets of the reduced candidate pool and selects a balanced on-dominated subset using weighted Chebyshev scalarization. The selected views then drive rasterization-aware two-of-three voting to retain a subset of the original Gaussians. We evaluate the exported asset directly and introduce a fixed-pose widened-field protocol that exposes structure outside the original framing. Across 18 scenes, CleanGS achieves 19.03 dB standard and 17.83 dB widened-field PSNR, compared with 16.44/16.29 dB for FlashSplat and 15.28/15.10 dB for GaussianCut with the same three masks. CleanGS leads five of six photometric metrics and remains within 0.32 dB of the uncleaned reconstruction in standard PSNR. Its filtering-and-export stage takes a median of 20 seconds and 1.9 GB peak memory, compared with 3.1 minutes and 41.6 GB for FlashSplat and 4.2 minutes and 34.9 GB for GaussianCut. Code is available at https://github.com/smlab-niser/clean-gs/.
Jyotirmaya Shivottam, Om Kumar, Subhankar Mishra
School of Computer Sciences National Institute of Science Education and Research Bhubaneswar, India