Physics-Inspired Gaussian Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks for X-ray Scatter Correction in Cone-Beam CT

Cone-beam CT (CBCT) employs a flat-panel detector to achieve three-dimensional imaging with high spatial resolution. However, CBCT is susceptible to scatter during data acquisition, which introduces CT value bias and reduced tissue contrast in the reconstructed images, ultimately degrading diagnostic accuracy. To address this issue, we propose a deep learning-based scatter artifact correction method inspired by physical prior knowledge. Leveraging the fact that the observed point scatter probability density distribution exhibits rotational symmetry in the projection domain. The method uses Gaussian Radial Basis Functions (RBF) to model the point scatter function and embeds it into the Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (KAN) layer, which provides efficient nonlinear mapping capabilities for learning high-dimensional scatter features. By incorporating the physical characteristics of the scattered photon distribution together with the complex function mapping capacity of KAN, the model improves its ability to accurately represent scatter. The effectiveness of the method is validated through both synthetic and real-scan experiments. Experimental results show that the model can effectively correct the scatter artifacts in the reconstructed images and is superior to the current methods in terms of quantitative metrics.