arXiv Computer Vision

Sparse Autoencoders for Expert-Assisted Interpretation of Histopathology Foundation Model Embeddings

arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 31

EXPOSE: Explainable and Domain-Robust Embeddings from Pathology Vision Foundation Models using Sparse Autoencoders

EXPOSE is a framework that applies Sparse Autoencoders to Vision Foundation Model embeddings in computational pathology, aiming to separate biological signals from domain‑specific noise. By training a sparse representation of VFM features and using a linear classifier to flag domain‑specific latent dimensions, the method masks these components before downstream relapse prediction, avoiding the need to retrain the backbone model. Experiments on a large prostate cancer dataset demonstrate that removing domain‑specific features improves cross‑domain performance and raises the Domain Robustness Index (DoRI).

By Anja Witte, Maximilian Lennartz, Jan Baumbach, Guido Sauter, Stefan Bonn, Patrick Fuhlert, Marina Zimmermann
arXiv Computer Vision
Sep 30

HERO: Histology Encoder for Robust Representation in Oncology

HERO (Histology Encoder for Robust Representation in Oncology) is a ViT‑G/14 pathology foundation model trained with DINO and iBOT objectives and refined using high‑resolution Gram anchoring on a 500‑million‑tile corpus from about 575,000 clinical whole‑slide images. It demonstrates superior robustness to center, scanner, and stain variation compared to other state‑of‑the‑art foundation models, while maintaining competitive performance on tile‑level classification, segmentation, and gene‑expression prediction. Across 39 slide‑level clinical tasks, HERO ranks first on average and achieves the best average rank across six benchmark frameworks under an equal‑weighted analysis.

By Zhi Li (Caris Life Sciences, Irving, TX, United States), Eghbal Amidi (Caris Life Sciences, Irving, TX, United States), Yating Cheng (Caris Life Sciences, Irving, TX, United States), Tyson Dawson (Caris Life Sciences, Irving, TX, United States), Gorkem Can Ates (Caris Life Sciences, Irving, TX, United States), Shuzhen Kuang (Caris Life Sciences, Irving, TX, United States), Norsang Lama (Caris Life Sciences, Irving, TX, United States), Md Ashequr Rahman (Caris Life Sciences, Irving, TX, United States), Zhiying Lu (Caris Life Sciences, Irving, TX, United States), Elisabeth K. Kong (Caris Life Sciences, Irving, TX, United States), Milan Radovich (Caris Life Sciences, Irving, TX, United States), David Spetzler (Caris Life Sciences, Irving, TX, United States), Matthew Oberley (Caris Life Sciences, Irving, TX, United States), George W. Sledge (Caris Life Sciences, Irving, TX, United States), Ming Chen (Caris Life Sciences, Irving, TX, United States)
arXiv AI
Aug 17

CMCNet: Aligning Ultrasound Image Embeddings with Textual TI-RADS Representations for Fine-Grained Thyroid Classification

arXiv:2608. 13939v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Ultrasound is the primary imaging modality for assessing thyroid nodules, and the ACR TI-RADS framework standardizes diagnosis through five ultrasound feature categories that are aggregated into five risk levels (TR1-TR5).

By Bingxin Yu, Xueli Wang, Jerry Zhou, Wenyan Wang, Li Wen, Lan Huang, Xin Feng, Fengfeng Zhou, Kewei Li
arXiv AI
Sep 1

Towards Accurate and Lightweight Peripheral Neuroblastic Tumor Diagnosis via Contrastive Multi-scale Pathological Image Analysis

The paper introduces CoPath, a lightweight framework for diagnosing peripheral neuroblastic tumors (pNTs) from whole-slide images. CoPath combines CoHisNet, a multi‑scale feature‑fusion network that replaces traditional MLPs with Kolmogorov‑Arnold Network layers for efficient nonlinear modeling, and PathVote, which aggregates patch‑level predictions using pathology‑informed priors. Experiments on a private pNT cohort and the public BreakHis dataset show that CoPath matches or surpasses existing classifiers while reducing computational complexity.

By Zhu Zhu, Shuo Jiang, Jingyuan Zheng, Yawen Li, Yifei Chen, Manli Zhao, Weizhong Gu, Feiwei Qin, Jinhu Wang, Gang Yu
arXiv AI
Jun 24

Transformation Behavior of Images in Latent Space

arXiv:2606. 24430v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Training of neural networks for histopathology classification tasks typically relies on data encoding into latent space, which reduces complexity and improves performance.

By Christian Z\"ollner (Department of Applied Tumor Biology Institute of Pathology Heidelberg University Hospital), Mozzam Motiwala (Department of Applied Tumor Biology Institute of Pathology Heidelberg University Hospital), Aysel Ahadova (Department of Applied Tumor Biology Institute of Pathology Heidelberg University Hospital), Gerrit Anders (Leibniz Institut f\"ur Wissensmedien), Robert H\"uneburg (National Center for Hereditary Tumor Syndromes University Hospital Bonn, Department of Internal Medicine I University Hospital Bonn), Jacob Nattermann (National Center for Hereditary Tumor Syndromes University Hospital Bonn, Department of Internal Medicine I University Hospital Bonn), Matthias Kloor (Department of Applied Tumor Biology Institute of Pathology Heidelberg University Hospital)
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 24

FFM-CP: Cross-Backbone Fusion of Vision-Language Foundation Models for Few-Shot Computational Pathology

The paper introduces FFM-CP, a framework that fuses multiple pathology vision‑language foundation models for few‑shot learning. It aligns heterogeneous representations with an Orthogonal Procrustes transformation, then uses a unified graph to refine support‑image features and class prototypes across backbones. Experiments on six histopathology datasets show that FFM‑CP outperforms the best single adapted model in 50 of 54 few‑shot comparisons.

By Anh-Tien Nguyen, Trung DQ. Dang, Nghiem Tuong Diep, Bui Ngoc Han Nguyen, Tan-Ha Mai, Miriam Cindy Maurer, Phuong Hoa Nguyen, Thi Thuy Uyen Nguyen, Youngjun Park, Daniel Sonntag, Duy Minh Ho Nguyen, Anne-Christin Hauschild