Survey on depth and RGB image-based 3D hand shape and pose estimation

The field of vision-based human hand three-dimensional (3D) shape and pose estimation has attracted significant attention recently owing to its key role in various applications, such as natural humancomputer interactions. With the availability of large-scale annotated hand datasets and the rapid developments of deep neural networks (DNNs), numerous DNN-based data-driven methods have been proposed for accurate and rapid hand shape and pose estimation. Nonetheless, the existence of complicated hand articulation, depth and scale ambiguities, occlusions, and finger similarity remain challenging. In this study, we present a comprehensive survey of state-of-the-art 3D hand shape and pose estimation approaches using RGB-D cameras. Related RGB-D cameras, hand datasets, and a performance analysis are also discussed to provide a holistic view of recent achievements. We also discuss the research potential of this rapidly growing field.