arXiv AI

Spatial Transcriptomics as Images for Large-Scale Pretraining

arXiv:2603. 13432v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Spatial Transcriptomics (ST) profiles thousands of gene expression values at discrete spots with precise coordinates on tissue sections, preserving spatial context essential for clinical and pathological studies.

arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 3

Spatial Transcriptomics-Guided Alignment Enhances Molecular Profiling in Pathology Foundation Model

arXiv:2606. 03644v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Comprehensive molecular profiling is essential for modern precision oncology but remains hindered by prohibitive costs, specimen exhaustion, and protracted turnaround times.

By Fengtao Zhou, Yingxue Xu, Zhengyu Zhang, Yihui Wang, Zhengrui Guo, Ling Liang, Jiabo Ma, Cheng Jin, Ziyi Liu, Huajun Zhou, Hongyi Wang, Du Cai, Chenglong Zhao, Xi Wang, Can Yang, Yu Wang, Wenbin Li, Feng Gao, Zhe Wang, Zhenhui Li, Xiuming Zhang, Li Liang, Hao Chen
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 5

HEIST: A Graph Foundation Model for Spatial Transcriptomics and Proteomics Data

arXiv:2506. 11152v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Single-cell transcriptomics and proteomics have become a great source for data-driven insights into biology, enabling the use of advanced deep learning methods to understand cellular heterogeneity and gene expression at the single-cell level.

By Hiren Madhu, Jo\~ao Felipe Rocha, Tinglin Huang, Siddharth Viswanath, Smita Krishnaswamy, Rex Ying
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 25

SpaFactor: Lightweight Spatial Context-Aware Gene Program Modeling for Histology-to-Transcriptomics Inference

SpaFactor is a lightweight framework that predicts spatial gene expression from hematoxylin and eosin images by fusing central spot visuals with multiscale neighborhood context. It uses a residual MLP to map tissue microenvironment to low‑dimensional latent gene programs, which are decoded into coordinated multi‑gene predictions. Across five public cohorts, SpaFactor outperforms existing methods, especially for spatially variable genes, and better recovers biologically organized spatial patterns.

By Shiting Ruan, Xitong Ling, Qiming He, Ziyou Yan, Huaitian Yuan, Tian Guan, Ying Xiao, Xu Guan, Yonghong He
arXiv AI
3d ago

GATE-ST: Gene-Aware Text-image Encoder for Spatial Transcriptomics

GATE-ST is a gene-aware text-image encoder that enhances spatial transcriptomics predictions by integrating gene descriptions into image-based models. The method encodes gene summaries with a text encoder and fuses these embeddings with image features via cross‑attention, aligning them with morphological cues. Benchmarks show GATE‑ST outperforms random gene embeddings and other image‑text fusion architectures, indicating its potential to improve accuracy while reducing time and cost in spatial gene expression analysis.

By Lucas Ni, Jian Luo, Wentao Huang, Chao Chen
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 22

Correlation-Guided Flow Matching with Annealed Masking for Spatial Transcriptomics Generation

CorrFlow is a new generative framework for predicting spatial transcriptomics from histology images. It explicitly models gene-gene interactions using an annealed masked flow matching strategy and a gene graph‑regularized optimization that incorporates prior knowledge from STRING and data‑driven co‑expression from WGCNA. Across 12 datasets, CorrFlow outperforms existing methods in average PCC and HPCC, producing more biologically coherent ST predictions.

By Yupei Zhang, Hao Chen, Li Pan, Chao Li, Xiaohan Xing