Multi-virtual View Scoring Network for 3D Hand Pose Estimation from a Single Depth Image

3D hand pose estimation is a crucial subject in the domain of computer vision. Recently researchers transform a single depth image into multiple virtual view depth images. By projecting a single depth image through point cloud transformation and using the depth images of multiple virtual views together for hand pose estimation, these methods can effectively improve the estimation accuracy. However, current methods have issues with distorted generated depth images, insufficient usage of the depth image of each view, and high computational overhead. To overcome these problems, we introduce a multi-virtual view scoring network (MVSN). Our proposed MVSN consists of a single virtual view estimation module, virtual view feature encoding module, and virtual view scoring module. To generate an intermediate feature map suitable for virtual view scoring, the single virtual view estimation module uses a feature map offset loss function and enhance information interaction between channels in the backbone network. The virtual view feature encoding module adopts a two-branch structure to capture information about all joints and single joints from the intermediate feature map, respectively. This structure effectively improves model sensitivity to each view, better integrates information from each virtual view, and obtains a more appropriate scoring feature for each virtual view. The virtual view scoring module scores each view based on the scoring feature, and gives a higher score to the more accurately estimated virtual view. We also propose a dynamic virtual view removal strategy to remove poor quality views in the training process. Our model is tested on the NYU and ICVL datasets, and the mean joint error is 6.21 mm and 4.53 mm, respectively, exhibiting better estimation accuracy than existing methods.