Competition Guidelines

Description

For this image reconstruction challenge, you will need to come up with novel and creative ways to transform many single-photon camera frames into a single high-quality image! This setting is very similar to traditional burst imaging, but taken to the extreme. Instead of a few burst images, you have access to a thousand, but the catch is that each input frame is extremely noisy. Oh, and of course, the scene is dynamic!
For a very simple implementation please see the FAQ.

Timeline

The single photon reconstruction competition is now open! The submission deadline is April 1, 2026 (AOE) and winners will be announced in summer 2026.

Eligibility

Anyone is welcome to participate; however, due to potential conflicts of interest, students and employees affiliated with the organizing committee's labs or the sponsoring companies are encouraged to participate but will not be considered for the final prizes.

Participation Requirements

In order to participate in the competition, you must:

• Create an account and submit your reconstruction results for evaluation. You may submit results for evaluation as many times as you'd like, but keep in mind that:
  1. You may only submit your results for evaluation up to 4 times per day,
  2. And only one submission will count towards the competition.
• Once evaluated (this can take a few hours), ensure you change the visibility of your final submission to "Anonymous"; otherwise, the judges will not be able to view your reconstruction results, and you will be automatically disqualified. Also, make sure to save the submission file, as you will be required to re-upload it in the final step.
• In a CVPR-formated 4 page document (references excluded) explaining your method, design decision, and any algorithmic considerations. This document will be sent to our judges, who will review it alongside your reconstruction results, so ensure it is properly anonymized!
• Publish your source code such that it can be publicly viewed; you'll need to submit a link to its repository.
• Finally, to formally apply to the competition, upload all these materials by filling out this form.

Judging and Prizes

Submissions will be evaluated by a panel of judges who are experts in the field of single-photon computational imaging. Judges will wholistically consider both reconstruction metrics and qualitative quality, as well as the proposed methodology as described in the submission's whitepaper. Thanks to our sponsors, thousands of dollars in prizes will be awarded!

Intellectual Property and Use of Submissions

Participants retain full ownership of all intellectual property rights, including any copyrights, patents, and other proprietary rights, in and to their submissions. By entering the competition, participants grant the organizers a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, and perpetual license to use, reproduce, publish, share, distribute, and display the submission materials, in whole or in part, for purposes related to the administration, promotion, and operation of the competition and related activities. This license does not transfer ownership of the submission and does not restrict participants from using, commercializing, or licensing their submissions independently.

Competition FAQ

Can I participate in the competition and also publish my work at another conference or journal?

Of course! Your participation in this challenge does not in any way prevent you from publication elsewhere. Your 4-page competition write-up does not constitute a publication, and thus you are free to use it as the basis of a manuscript for another venue. In fact, if you do publish your method, consider including (and perhaps even linking to) your single photon benchmark scores, as these provide a standardized metric to compare against.

Can we use additional datasets?

Yes! You may use any datasets you'd like; we just ask that you clearly state which datasets have been used, and that any additional data-wrangling is clearly described.