Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks vs. Multi-Layer Perceptrons: A Rigorous Statistical Benchmark on Clinical Tabular Data

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Abstract

Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (KANs) have recently been proposed as a promising alternative to Multi-Layer Perceptrons (MLPs). However, empirical evaluations on structured medical datasets remain scarce, and commonly reported metrics like AUROC can yield overly optimistic performance estimates on imbalanced clinical cohorts. In this study, we present a standardized benchmark comparing eleven architectures - nine KAN variants (FastKAN, WavKAN, ReLUKAN, ChebyKAN, TaylorKAN, GramKAN, JacobiKAN, LegendreKAN, and TabKAN), a tuned StandardMLP, and a Random Forest baseline - across seven heterogeneous medical tabular datasets spanning oncology, cardiology, nephrology, neurology, endocrinology, and obstetrics. Our experimental protocol employs a 3x5 Repeated Stratified K-Fold cross-validation scheme with nested Bayesian hyperparameter optimization and evaluates discrimination via Area Under the Precision-Recall Curve (AUPRC), calibration through the Brier Score, and computational efficiency. Formal equivalence testing is conducted using the Bayesian Correlated t-Test with a Region of Practical Equivalence (ROPE) at +/- 0.01. The results indicate that on datasets with severe class imbalance, dedicated KAN architectures (particularly TabKAN and ReLUKAN) can improve minority-class detection and achieve higher AUPRC than standard MLPs. Nevertheless, across pooled datasets, KAN variants demonstrate comparable overall predictive discrimination rather than a systematic advantage, while requiring 1.20x to 1.48x longer inference latency per sample and up to 12.5x more trainable parameters. Consequently, StandardMLP remains a strong baseline on the efficiency Pareto frontier, while KAN variants provide a viable alternative when precision on rare positive cases is the primary clinical objective. The code for reproducing the results is available at https://github.com/rafalwodzinski/kan_mlp_comparison.

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