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ARXIV Cancer: breast cancer Method: spatial multi-task learning

Spatial Multi-Task Learning for Breast Cancer Molecular Subtype Prediction from Single-Phase DCE-MRI

Sen Zeng, Hong Zhou, Zheng Zhu, Yang Liu
Published 2026-01-11 17:33
This study presents a spatial multi-task learning framework aimed at predicting molecular subtypes of breast cancer from single-phase dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI). The method integrates deep feature extraction with multi-scale spatial attention and a region-of-interest weighting module to enhance tumor characterization. Results indicate that the framework significantly outperforms traditional radiomics and single-task deep learning approaches, achieving high accuracy in classifying key biomarkers associated with breast cancer subtypes.
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Accurate molecular subtype classification is essential for personalized breast cancer treatment, yet conventional immunohistochemical analysis relies on invasive biopsies and is prone to sampling bias. Although dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) enables non-invasive tumor characterization, clinical workflows typically acquire only single-phase post-contrast images to reduce scan time and contrast agent dose. In this study, we propose a spatial multi-task learning framework for breast cancer molecular subtype prediction from clinically practical single-phase DCE-MRI. The framework simultaneously predicts estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) status, and the Ki-67 proliferation index -- biomarkers that collectively define molecular subtypes. The architecture integrates a deep feature extraction network with multi-scale spatial attention to capture intratumoral and peritumoral characteristics, together with a region-of-interest weighting module that emphasizes the tumor core, rim, and surrounding tissue. Multi-task learning exploits biological correlations among biomarkers through shared representations with task-specific prediction branches. Experiments on a dataset of 960 cases (886 internal cases split 7:1:2 for training/validation/testing, and 74 external cases evaluated via five-fold cross-validation) demonstrate that the proposed method achieves an AUC of 0.893, 0.824, and 0.857 for ER, PR, and HER2 classification, respectively, and a mean absolute error of 8.2\% for Ki-67 regression, significantly outperforming radiomics and single-task deep learning baselines. These results indicate the feasibility of accurate, non-invasive molecular subtype prediction using standard imaging protocols.

ARXIV Cancer: brain tumor Method: unsupervised domain adaptation

Unsupervised Domain Adaptation with SAM-RefiSeR for Enhanced Brain Tumor Segmentation

Dillan Imans, Phuoc-Nguyen Bui, Duc-Tai Le, Hyunseung Choo
Published 2026-01-11 12:10
This paper presents a method for enhancing brain tumor segmentation through unsupervised domain adaptation using SAM-RefiSeR. The approach aims to improve the accuracy of segmentation models by adapting them to different domains without requiring labeled data. The results indicate that this method effectively enhances segmentation performance in brain tumor imaging.
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Unsupervised Domain Adaptation with SAM-RefiSeR for Enhanced Brain Tumor Segmentation

ARXIV Cancer: prostate cancer Method: deep learning

Computational Mapping of Reactive Stroma in Prostate Cancer Yields Interpretable, Prognostic Biomarkers

Mara Pleasure, Ekaterina Redekop, Dhakshina Ilango, Zichen Wang, Vedrana Ivezic, Kimberly Flores, Israa Laklouk, Jitin Makker, Gregory Fishbein, Anthony Sisk, William Speier, Corey W. Arnold
Published 2026-01-10 00:03
This study introduces PROTAS, a deep learning framework designed to quantify reactive stroma in prostate cancer using routine histopathological slides. The framework links stromal morphology to biological processes and demonstrates superior performance in detecting reactive stroma compared to pathologists. Additionally, the identified stromal features are shown to predict biochemical recurrence, offering a new approach for risk stratification in prostate cancer.
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Current histopathological grading of prostate cancer relies primarily on glandular architecture, largely overlooking the tumor microenvironment. Here, we present PROTAS, a deep learning framework that quantifies reactive stroma (RS) in routine hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) slides and links stromal morphology to underlying biology. PROTAS-defined RS is characterized by nuclear enlargement, collagen disorganization, and transcriptomic enrichment of contractile pathways. PROTAS detects RS robustly in the external Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian (PLCO) dataset and, using domain-adversarial training, generalizes to diagnostic biopsies. In head-to-head comparisons, PROTAS outperforms pathologists for RS detection, and spatial RS features predict biochemical recurrence independently of established prognostic variables (c-index 0.80). By capturing subtle stromal phenotypes associated with tumor progression, PROTAS provides an interpretable, scalable biomarker to refine risk stratification.

ARXIV Cancer: pancreatic cancer Method: vision transformer

Performance of a Deep Learning-Based Segmentation Model for Pancreatic Tumors on Public Endoscopic Ultrasound Datasets

Pankaj Gupta, Priya Mudgil, Niharika Dutta, Kartik Bose, Nitish Kumar, Anupam Kumar, Jimil Shah, Vaneet Jearth, Jayanta Samanta, Vishal Sharma, Harshal Mandavdhare, Surinder Rana, Saroj K Sinha, Usha Dutta
Published 2026-01-09 16:48
This study evaluates a Vision Transformer-based deep learning segmentation model specifically designed for pancreatic tumors using endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) images. The model was trained on 17,367 images and validated through 5-fold cross-validation, achieving notable metrics such as a mean Dice similarity coefficient of 0.651 and an accuracy of 97.5%. The results indicate strong performance in segmenting pancreatic tumors, although challenges related to dataset heterogeneity and external validation were noted.
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Background: Pancreatic cancer is one of the most aggressive cancers, with poor survival rates. Endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) is a key diagnostic modality, but its effectiveness is constrained by operator subjectivity. This study evaluates a Vision Transformer-based deep learning segmentation model for pancreatic tumors. Methods: A segmentation model using the USFM framework with a Vision Transformer backbone was trained and validated with 17,367 EUS images (from two public datasets) in 5-fold cross-validation. The model was tested on an independent dataset of 350 EUS images from another public dataset, manually segmented by radiologists. Preprocessing included grayscale conversion, cropping, and resizing to 512x512 pixels. Metrics included Dice similarity coefficient (DSC), intersection over union (IoU), sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy. Results: In 5-fold cross-validation, the model achieved a mean DSC of 0.651 +/- 0.738, IoU of 0.579 +/- 0.658, sensitivity of 69.8%, specificity of 98.8%, and accuracy of 97.5%. For the external validation set, the model achieved a DSC of 0.657 (95% CI: 0.634-0.769), IoU of 0.614 (95% CI: 0.590-0.689), sensitivity of 71.8%, and specificity of 97.7%. Results were consistent, but 9.7% of cases exhibited erroneous multiple predictions. Conclusions: The Vision Transformer-based model demonstrated strong performance for pancreatic tumor segmentation in EUS images. However, dataset heterogeneity and limited external validation highlight the need for further refinement, standardization, and prospective studies.

ARXIV Cancer: kidney cancer Method: latent diffusion models

Kidney Cancer Detection Using 3D-Based Latent Diffusion Models

Jen Dusseljee, Sarah de Boer, Alessa Hering
Published 2026-01-09 15:30
This study introduces a novel pipeline utilizing latent diffusion models for the detection of kidney anomalies in 3D contrast-enhanced abdominal CT images. The method integrates Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models, Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models, and Vector-Quantized Generative Adversarial Networks, operating directly on image volumes with weak supervision. Although the results do not yet reach the performance of supervised models, they highlight potential improvements in reconstruction fidelity and lesion localization.
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In this work, we present a novel latent diffusion-based pipeline for 3D kidney anomaly detection on contrast-enhanced abdominal CT. The method combines Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models (DDPMs), Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models (DDIMs), and Vector-Quantized Generative Adversarial Networks (VQ-GANs). Unlike prior slice-wise approaches, our method operates directly on an image volume and leverages weak supervision with only case-level pseudo-labels. We benchmark our approach against state-of-the-art supervised segmentation and detection models. This study demonstrates the feasibility and promise of 3D latent diffusion for weakly supervised anomaly detection. While the current results do not yet match supervised baselines, they reveal key directions for improving reconstruction fidelity and lesion localization. Our findings provide an important step toward annotation-efficient, generative modeling of complex abdominal anatomy.

ARXIV Cancer: breast cancer Method: deep learning

Prompt-Free SAM-Based Multi-Task Framework for Breast Ultrasound Lesion Segmentation and Classification

Samuel E. Johnny, Bernes L. Atabonfack, Israel Alagbe, Assane Gueye
Published 2026-01-09 03:02
This study introduces a multi-task deep learning framework for the segmentation and classification of breast lesions in ultrasound imaging. The method utilizes embeddings from the Segment Anything Model (SAM) in a prompt-free, fully supervised manner, employing a lightweight convolutional head or a UNet-inspired decoder for segmentation. The framework demonstrates significant improvements in both lesion delineation and diagnostic accuracy, achieving a Dice Similarity Coefficient of 0.887 and an accuracy of 92.3 percent on the PRECISE 2025 dataset.
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Accurate tumor segmentation and classification in breast ultrasound (BUS) imaging remain challenging due to low contrast, speckle noise, and diverse lesion morphology. This study presents a multi-task deep learning framework that jointly performs lesion segmentation and diagnostic classification using embeddings from the Segment Anything Model (SAM) vision encoder. Unlike prompt-based SAM variants, our approach employs a prompt-free, fully supervised adaptation where high-dimensional SAM features are decoded through either a lightweight convolutional head or a UNet-inspired decoder for pixel-wise segmentation. The classification branch is enhanced via mask-guided attention, allowing the model to focus on lesion-relevant features while suppressing background artifacts. Experiments on the PRECISE 2025 breast ultrasound dataset, split per class into 80 percent training and 20 percent testing, show that the proposed method achieves a Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC) of 0.887 and an accuracy of 92.3 percent, ranking among the top entries on the PRECISE challenge leaderboard. These results demonstrate that SAM-based representations, when coupled with segmentation-guided learning, significantly improve both lesion delineation and diagnostic prediction in breast ultrasound imaging.

ARXIV Cancer: unknown Method: multi-task learning

Multi-task Cross-modal Learning for Chest X-ray Image Retrieval

Zhaohui Liang, Sivaramakrishnan Rajaraman, Niccolo Marini, Zhiyun Xue, Sameer Antani
Published 2026-01-08 21:44
This study presents a multi-task learning framework aimed at improving the retrieval of clinically relevant radiology reports using chest X-ray (CXR) image queries. The proposed method fine-tunes the BiomedCLIP model by incorporating a lightweight MLP projector head and a composite loss function. Experimental results indicate that the fine-tuned model outperforms both the pretrained BiomedCLIP and general-purpose CLIP models in terms of balanced performance across image-to-text and text-to-image retrieval tasks.
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CLIP and BiomedCLIP are examples of vision-language foundation models and offer strong cross-modal embeddings; however, they are not optimized for fine-grained medical retrieval tasks, such as retrieving clinically relevant radiology reports using chest X-ray (CXR) image queries. To address this shortcoming, we propose a multi-task learning framework to fine-tune BiomedCLIP and evaluate improvements to CXR image-text retrieval. Using BiomedCLIP as the backbone, we incorporate a lightweight MLP projector head trained with a multi-task composite loss function that includes: (1) a binary cross-entropy loss to distinguish normal from abnormal CXR studies, (2) a supervised contrastive loss to reinforce intra-class consistency, and (3) a CLIP loss to maintain cross-modal alignment. Experimental results demonstrate that the fine-tuned model achieves more balanced and clinically meaningful performance across both image-to-text and text-to-image retrieval tasks compared to the pretrained BiomedCLIP and general-purpose CLIP models. Furthermore, t-SNE visualizations reveal clearer semantic clustering of normal and abnormal cases, demonstrating the model's enhanced diagnostic sensitivity. These findings highlight the value of domain-adaptive, multi-task learning for advancing cross-modal retrieval in biomedical applications.

ARXIV Cancer: breast cancer Method: ensemble model

Ensemble of radiomics and ConvNeXt for breast cancer diagnosis

Jorge Alberto Garza-Abdala, Gerardo Alejandro Fumagal-González, Beatriz A. Bosques-Palomo, Mario Alexis Monsivais Molina, Daly Avedano, Servando Cardona-Huerta, José Gerardo Tamez-Pena
Published 2026-01-08 20:54
This paper evaluates the effectiveness of ensemble techniques that integrate radiomics and deep learning for the early diagnosis of breast cancer from screening mammograms. Utilizing two independent datasets, the study demonstrates that the ensemble method outperforms individual models, achieving an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.87. The findings suggest that combining these approaches significantly enhances diagnostic accuracy.
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Early diagnosis of breast cancer is crucial for improving survival rates. Radiomics and deep learning (DL) have shown significant potential in assisting radiologists with early cancer detection. This paper aims to critically assess the performance of radiomics, DL, and ensemble techniques in detecting cancer from screening mammograms. Two independent datasets were used: the RSNA 2023 Breast Cancer Detection Challenge (11,913 patients) and a Mexican cohort from the TecSalud dataset (19,400 patients). The ConvNeXtV1-small DL model was trained on the RSNA dataset and validated on the TecSalud dataset, while radiomics models were developed using the TecSalud dataset and validated with a leave-one-year-out approach. The ensemble method consistently combined and calibrated predictions using the same methodology. Results showed that the ensemble approach achieved the highest area under the curve (AUC) of 0.87, compared to 0.83 for ConvNeXtV1-small and 0.80 for radiomics. In conclusion, ensemble methods combining DL and radiomics predictions significantly enhance breast cancer diagnosis from mammograms.

ARXIV Cancer: general cancer Method: pathology vision foundation models

Atlas 2 -- Foundation models for clinical deployment

Maximilian Alber, Timo Milbich, Alexandra Carpen-Amarie, Stephan Tietz, Jonas Dippel, Lukas Muttenthaler, Beatriz Perez Cancer, Alessandro Benetti, Panos Korfiatis, Elias Eulig, Jérôme Lüscher, Jiasen Wu, Sayed Abid Hashimi, Gabriel Dernbach, Simon Schallenberg, Neelay Shah, Moritz Krügener, Aniruddh Jammoria, Jake Matras, Patrick Duffy, Matt Redlon, Philipp Jurmeister, David Horst, Lukas Ruff, Klaus-Robert Müller, Frederick Klauschen, Andrew Norgan
Published 2026-01-08 17:37
This paper introduces Atlas 2, a series of pathology vision foundation models designed to enhance computational pathology by addressing performance, robustness, and computational efficiency issues. The models were evaluated across eighty public benchmarks, demonstrating state-of-the-art performance. They were trained on a dataset of 5.5 million histopathology whole slide images from multiple medical institutions.
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Pathology foundation models substantially advanced the possibilities in computational pathology -- yet tradeoffs in terms of performance, robustness, and computational requirements remained, which limited their clinical deployment. In this report, we present Atlas 2, Atlas 2-B, and Atlas 2-S, three pathology vision foundation models which bridge these shortcomings by showing state-of-the-art performance in prediction performance, robustness, and resource efficiency in a comprehensive evaluation across eighty public benchmarks. Our models were trained on the largest pathology foundation model dataset to date comprising 5.5 million histopathology whole slide images, collected from three medical institutions Charité - Universtätsmedizin Berlin, LMU Munich, and Mayo Clinic.

ARXIV Cancer: pancreatic cancer Method: dual-branch multi-scale UNet

DB-MSMUNet:Dual Branch Multi-scale Mamba UNet for Pancreatic CT Scans Segmentation

Qiu Guan, Zhiqiang Yang, Dezhang Ye, Yang Chen, Xinli Xu, Ying Tang
Published 2026-01-08 07:41
This paper presents DB-MSMUNet, a novel encoder-decoder architecture aimed at improving the segmentation of the pancreas and its lesions in CT scans, which is critical for diagnosing pancreatic cancer. The method incorporates a Multi-scale Mamba Module and a dual-decoder design to enhance boundary detection and detail preservation. Extensive experiments demonstrate that DB-MSMUNet outperforms existing methods in segmentation accuracy and robustness across multiple datasets.
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Accurate segmentation of the pancreas and its lesions in CT scans is crucial for the precise diagnosis and treatment of pancreatic cancer. However, it remains a highly challenging task due to several factors such as low tissue contrast with surrounding organs, blurry anatomical boundaries, irregular organ shapes, and the small size of lesions. To tackle these issues, we propose DB-MSMUNet (Dual-Branch Multi-scale Mamba UNet), a novel encoder-decoder architecture designed specifically for robust pancreatic segmentation. The encoder is constructed using a Multi-scale Mamba Module (MSMM), which combines deformable convolutions and multi-scale state space modeling to enhance both global context modeling and local deformation adaptation. The network employs a dual-decoder design: the edge decoder introduces an Edge Enhancement Path (EEP) to explicitly capture boundary cues and refine fuzzy contours, while the area decoder incorporates a Multi-layer Decoder (MLD) to preserve fine-grained details and accurately reconstruct small lesions by leveraging multi-scale deep semantic features. Furthermore, Auxiliary Deep Supervision (ADS) heads are added at multiple scales to both decoders, providing more accurate gradient feedback and further enhancing the discriminative capability of multi-scale features. We conduct extensive experiments on three datasets: the NIH Pancreas dataset, the MSD dataset, and a clinical pancreatic tumor dataset provided by collaborating hospitals. DB-MSMUNet achieves Dice Similarity Coefficients of 89.47%, 87.59%, and 89.02%, respectively, outperforming most existing state-of-the-art methods in terms of segmentation accuracy, edge preservation, and robustness across different datasets. These results demonstrate the effectiveness and generalizability of the proposed method for real-world pancreatic CT segmentation tasks.