# U-MAN: U-Net with Multi-scale Adaptive KAN Network for Medical Image Segmentation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.22444 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.22444/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 25 of its 32 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 Sep 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Fully Convolutional Networks for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.4038/) (2014)
- [Squeeze-and-Excitation Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.01507/) (2017)
- [MobileNets: Efficient Convolutional Neural Networks for Mobile Vision Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.04861/) (2017)
- [Encoder-Decoder with Atrous Separable Convolution for Semantic Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.02611/) (2018)
- [Pyramid Scene Parsing Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.01105/) (2016)
- [CBAM: Convolutional Block Attention Module](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.06521/) (2018)
- [Non-local Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.07971/) (2017)
- [V-Net: Fully Convolutional Neural Networks for Volumetric Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.04797/) (2016)
- [TransUNet: Transformers Make Strong Encoders for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.04306/) (2021)
- [UNet++: A Nested U-Net Architecture for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.10165/) (2018)
- [Attention U-Net: Learning Where to Look for the Pancreas](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.03999/) (2018)
- [A Survey on Deep Learning in Medical Image Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.05747/) (2017)
- [Deep Networks with Stochastic Depth](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.09382/) (2016)
- [Language Modeling with Gated Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.08083/) (2016)
- [KAN: Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.19756/) (2024)
- [U-Mamba: Enhancing Long-range Dependency for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.04722/) (2024)
- [Deep Learning for Medical Image Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.08987/) (2017)
- [Transformers in Medical Imaging: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.09873/) (2022)
- [Gland Segmentation in Colon Histology Images: The GlaS Challenge Contest](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.00275/) (2016)
- [UNeXt: MLP-based Rapid Medical Image Segmentation Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.04967/) (2022)
- [Attention-guided Network for Ghost-free High Dynamic Range Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.10293/) (2019)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Medical image segmentation faces significant challenges in preserving fine-grained details and precise boundaries due to complex anatomical structures and pathological regions. These challenges primarily stem from two key limitations of conventional U-Net architectures: (1) their simple skip connections ignore the encoder-decoder semantic gap between various features, and (2) they lack the capability for multi-scale feature extraction in deep layers. To address these challenges, we propose the U-Net with Multi-scale Adaptive KAN (U-MAN), a novel architecture that enhances the emerging Kolmogorov-Arnold Network (KAN) with two specialized modules: Progressive Attention-Guided Feature Fusion (PAGF) and the Multi-scale Adaptive KAN (MAN). Our PAGF module replaces the simple skip connection, using attention to fuse features from the encoder and decoder. The MAN module enables the network to adaptively process features at multiple scales, improving its ability to segment objects of various sizes. Experiments on three public datasets (BUSI, GLAS, and CVC) show that U-MAN outperforms state-of-the-art methods, particularly in defining accurate boundaries and preserving fine details.