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Journal of ZheJiang University (Engineering Science)  2026, Vol. 60 Issue (4): 772-781    DOI: 10.3785/j.issn.1008-973X.2026.04.009
    
A panoramic segmentation method for maxillofacial structures based on KAN and U-Net networks
Zhi CAI(),Zhengdong ZHOU*(),Xiaoxi YUAN,Zeyi YANG,Mengyao YUAN
State Key Laboratory of Mechanics and Control for Aerospace Structures, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China
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Abstract  

To improve the performance of panoramic segmentation of complex maxillofacial structures, a multi-scale feature extraction model (MC-UKAN) was proposed, which combined the Kolmogorov-Arnold representation theorem with the U-Net architecture. The model integrated position priors, learnable nonlinear activation functions, and multi-scale feature extraction to effectively enhance feature expression ability. Based on this model, a three-stage maxillofacial structure panoramic segmentation framework was designed. In the first stage, coarse segmentation and tooth position calibration were performed on low-resolution images using MC-UKAN. In the second stage, the target structures were localized using the coarse segmentation results on the original images, the K-means clustering algorithm was then applied to categorize these targets into five classes, and corresponding networks were employed for fine-grained segmentation. In the third stage, a lightweight network was used to segment the jawbones and pharynx on the original images. By fusing multi-scale segmentation results, precise segmentation of structures such as teeth, dental pulp, jawbones, and nerve canals was achieved. Experimental results on the ToothFairy3 dataset demonstrated that the proposed method achieved an 88.3% Dice coefficient and 5.04 mm HD95 for the segmentation of 74 categories of oral and maxillofacial structures, with an average inference time of 27.04 seconds. These results fully validated the superior performance of the proposed method in complex maxillofacial structure segmentation tasks.



Key wordsoral segmentation      cone beam computed tomography (CBCT)      Kolmogorov-Arnold representation theorem      ToothFairy3      dental alignment     
Received: 08 August 2025      Published: 19 March 2026
CLC:  TP 393  
Fund:  国家自然科学基金资助项目 (52375570); 中国航空研究院首批揭榜挂帅项目(F2021109); 上海航天科技创新基金资助项目(SAST2019-121); 南京航空航天大学研究生科研与实践创新计划项目(xcxjh20240111,xcxjh20240110).
Corresponding Authors: Zhengdong ZHOU     E-mail: caizhi123@nuaa.edu.cn;zzd_msc@nuaa.edu.cn
Cite this article:

Zhi CAI,Zhengdong ZHOU,Xiaoxi YUAN,Zeyi YANG,Mengyao YUAN. A panoramic segmentation method for maxillofacial structures based on KAN and U-Net networks. Journal of ZheJiang University (Engineering Science), 2026, 60(4): 772-781.

URL:

https://www.zjujournals.com/eng/10.3785/j.issn.1008-973X.2026.04.009     OR     https://www.zjujournals.com/eng/Y2026/V60/I4/772


基于KAN和U-Net网络的颌面结构全景分割方法

为了提升复杂颌面结构的全景分割性能,提出结合Kolmogorov-Arnold表示定理与U-Net架构的多尺度特征提取模型(MC-UKAN). 该模型通过融合位置先验、可学习非线性激活函数和多尺度特征提取,有效增强了特征表达能力. 基于该模型,设计三阶段颌面结构全景分割框架,第1阶段在低分辨率图像中利用MC-UKAN进行粗分割和牙位标定;第2阶段在原始图像上,基于粗分割结果定位目标结构,利用K-means聚类算法将目标划分为5类,采用对应网络进行精细分割;第3阶段使用轻量化网络在原始图像上分割出颌骨及咽喉. 通过融合多尺度分割结果,实现对牙齿、牙髓、颌骨、神经管等结构的精确分割. 在ToothFairy3数据集上的实验结果表明,该方法在74类口腔颌面结构的分割中达到了88.3%的Dice系数和5.04 mm的HD95,平均推理时间为27.04 s,展现出优越的性能.


关键词: 口腔分割,  锥形束计算机断层扫描(CBCT),  Kolmogorov-Arnold表示定理,  ToothFairy3,  牙位标定 
Fig.1 Three-stage maxillofacial segmentation framework
Fig.2 Visualization results of K-means and t-SNE for five types of structures
Fig.3 Architecture of MC-UKAN
Fig.4 MC-KAN convolution module architecture
Fig.5 Complete annotation sample of ToothFairy3
Fig.6 Preprocessed images
网络Dice/%
均值(不计牙髓)颌骨IAC上颌窦咽喉牙齿修复体牙髓
CNNsnnU-Net[20]70.9290.3171.3464.8195.6673.1729.50
nnU-Net ResEnc[20]74.1691.7773.0165.7195.2676.4837.10
Transf.TransU-Net[20]70.3290.3381.9659.6987.8972.4627.68
nnFormer[20]76.7991.5072.2875.1190.8579.3718.95
UNETR++[20]71.4392.3868.8774.5191.6073.7026.21
MambaUMamba[20]85.0590.0585.2677.0292.1886.5843.89
VMamba[20]73.1390.7560.6273.2088.2375.9914.86
Swin-UMamba[20]79.6494.2972.6487.7593.0580.7125.30
3-Stage3D UKAN_SE86.5194.9582.6276.8495.9689.4980.4986.09
PMFSNet3D87.9695.9484.9973.8095.9688.8280.2785.10
本研究模型88.8795.9584.2282.0995.9689.5181.1887.55
Tab.1 Comparison of Dice coefficients of different methods
网络HD95/mm
均值(不计牙髓)颌骨IAC上颌窦咽喉牙齿修复体牙髓
CNNsnnU-Net[20]17.8612.5329.1128.3919.2318.3220.95
nnU-Net ResEnc[20]14.4812.5327.8129.9917.7514.2616.32
Transf.TransU-Net[20]20.1749.0211.9959.7642.8715.0422.65
nnFormer[20]5.4520.0910.068.2224.532.9413.67
UNETR++[20]17.235.4415.1015.4818.9617.9119.70
MambaUMamba[20]5.2822.1716.234.3525.252.2313.97
VMamba[20]5.177.179.949.8923.953.3914.63
Swin-UMamba[20]2.944.252.022.382.792.5914.93
3-Stage3D UKAN_SE5.271.629.968.201.172.1824.872.86
PMFSNet3D5.481.6311.385.251.172.3729.032.80
本研究模型5.041.5910.782.331.171.9624.822.11
Tab.2 Comparison of HD95 coefficients of different methods
方法数据集分割结构测试集样本数Dice/%
Daza等[13]ToothFairy2上下颌骨、IAC、上颌窦、咽喉、牙齿、修复体5085.90
Wodzinski等[21]ToothFairy2上颌骨、上颌窦、上颌牙齿、修复体、咽喉5073.80
下颌骨、IAC、下颌牙齿、修复体5087.80
薄士仕等[14]私有数据集牙齿(有修复体)1484.74
牙齿(无修复体)987.88
本研究模型ToothFairy3上下颌骨、IAC、上颌窦、咽喉、牙齿、修复体、牙髓10888.30
Tab.3 Comparison of categorical mean Dice coefficients with dental alignment
Fig.7 Segmentation results of maxilla/mandible, pharynx, maxillary sinus, IAC, teeth and their dental pulps
网络Dice/%
均值颌骨IAC上颌窦咽喉牙齿修复体
3D U-Net83.7186.9077.4695.5095.3683.3578.95
3D Unet_SE86.0088.3678.0695.4296.4885.7482.73
3D U-KAN85.8488.7179.3097.7795.6385.6280.50
3D UKAN_SE86.1988.5678.5694.4196.5786.1581.27
PMFSNet3D84.8087.8279.1688.6396.5084.7980.21
MC-UKAN(3×3×3)83.7085.4077.1583.5195.8883.6883.25
MC-UKAN(5×5×5)84.1386.5076.2181.4995.9383.9683.58
MC-UKAN(单一设备商)85.7195.90(下颌)79.3194.3385.9182.64
MC-UKAN86.8986.1077.1396.6196.0787.8783.75
Tab.4 Comparison of classification Dice coefficients of different networks of coarse segmentation module
Fig.8 Cross-sectional slices after second layer encoder with different convolution methods
模块结构Dice/%HD95/mm
局部高分辨细
分割模块
IAC94.690.97
上颌窦98.261.00
前牙及牙髓93.582.03
磨牙及牙髓90.693.30
修复体93.492.27
大尺度结构
分割模块
上颌骨85.7211.10
下颌骨96.452.57
咽喉95.962.60
Tab.5 Experimental results of local high-resolution fine segmentation module and large-scale structural segmentation module
模块耗时/s
粗分割模块3.86
大尺度结构分割模块2.46
局部高分辨细分割模块20.72
总计27.04
Tab.6 Three-stage modular reasoning time
PE3DNMC-KAN$ {N}_{\text{CNN}} $Dice%
0586.00
1482.66
2385.79
3285.54
4185.95
5086.89
×5086.06
Tab.7 Ablation experiment results of PE3D module and MC-KAN convolutional layer
Model Scale(C1,C2, C3, C4, C5)Dice/%
MC-UKAN_S(16,32,64,128,256)71.28
MC-UKAN_M(32,64,128,256,512)83.79
MC-UKAN(32,64,256,512,1024)86.89
Tab.8 Comparison of segmentation experimental results of MC-UKAN models with different scales
噪声类型$ \sigma $$ \lambda $$ \delta $Dice/%
高斯噪声0.0286.50
泊松噪声0.587.94
脉冲噪声0.0186.68
高斯+泊松0.020.586.00
高斯+脉冲0.020.0184.42
泊松+脉冲0.50.0186.09
高斯+泊松+脉冲0.020.50.0183.98
无噪声88.30
Tab.9 Comparison of segmentation experimental results with different noises on Toothfairy3 test set
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