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DTFD-MIL: Double-Tier Feature Distillation Multiple Instance Learning for Histopathology Whole Slide Image Classification

22 Mar 2022CVPR 2022 1arXiv:2203.12081archive 2025-07-28

Hongrun Zhang, Yanda Meng, Yitian Zhao, Yihong Qiao, Xiaoyun Yang, Sarah E. Coupland, Yalin Zheng

Multiple instance learning (MIL) has been increasingly used in the classification of histopathology whole slide images (WSIs). However, MIL approaches for this specific classification problem still face unique challenges, particularly those related to small sample cohorts. In these, there are limited number of WSI slides (bags), while the resolution of a single WSI is huge, which leads to a large number of patches (instances) cropped from this slide. To address this issue, we propose to virtually enlarge the number of bags by introducing the concept of pseudo-bags, on which a double-tier MIL framework is built to effectively use the intrinsic features. Besides, we also contribute to deriving the instance probability under the framework of attention-based MIL, and utilize the derivation to help construct and analyze the proposed framework. The proposed method outperforms other latest methods on the CAMELYON-16 by substantially large margins, and is also better in performance on the TCGA lung cancer dataset. The proposed framework is ready to be extended for wider MIL applications. The code is available at: https://github.com/hrzhang1123/DTFD-MIL

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hrzhang1123/dtfd-mil officialmentioned in paperpytorch report
liupei101/psemix mentioned on GitHubpytorch report

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get_cam_1d hrzhang1123/dtfd-mil/Main_DTFD_MIL.py official repository ran · our draft was wrong MIT (permissive) · bc62878a948ee57b · report
print_log hrzhang1123/dtfd-mil/Main_DTFD_MIL.py official repository unverified MIT (permissive) · c19a5908c9f8598e · report
train_attention_preFeature_DTFD hrzhang1123/dtfd-mil/Main_DTFD_MIL.py official repository unverified MIT (permissive) · 12c2a932db332fd1 · report
FCLayer liupei101/psemix/model/deepmil.py community (archive-listed) ran fingerprinted no licence file found · pointer only · 1477192e5fea9ad0 · report
BClassifier liupei101/psemix/model/deepmil.py community (archive-listed) unverified no licence file found · pointer only · cbaed2033ba4b98a · report
DSMIL liupei101/psemix/model/deepmil.py community (archive-listed) unverified no licence file found · pointer only · 34ff92b5bbff3b02 · report

Tasks

Image ClassificationMultiple Instance Learningimage-classificationwhole slide images

Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28

TaskDatasetModelMetricValueRank at snapshotLeaderboardReport
Multiple Instance Learning CAMELYON16 DTFD-MIL (AFS) ACC 0.908 #6 of 14 Archive leaderboard report
Multiple Instance Learning CAMELYON16 DTFD-MIL (AFS) AUC 0.946 #6 of 14 Archive leaderboard report
Multiple Instance Learning CAMELYON16 DTFD-MIL (MAS) ACC 0.897 #7 of 14 Archive leaderboard report
Multiple Instance Learning CAMELYON16 DTFD-MIL (MAS) AUC 0.945 #7 of 14 Archive leaderboard report
Multiple Instance Learning CAMELYON16 DTFD-MIL (MaxMinS) ACC 0.899 #8 of 14 Archive leaderboard report
Multiple Instance Learning CAMELYON16 DTFD-MIL (MaxMinS) AUC 0.941 #8 of 14 Archive leaderboard report
Multiple Instance Learning CAMELYON16 DTFD-MIL (MaxS) ACC 0.864 #12 of 14 Archive leaderboard report
Multiple Instance Learning CAMELYON16 DTFD-MIL (MaxS) AUC 0.907 #12 of 14 Archive leaderboard report
Multiple Instance Learning TCGA DTFD-MIL (AFS) ACC 0.951 #1 of 8 Archive leaderboard report
Multiple Instance Learning TCGA DTFD-MIL (MaxMinS) ACC 0.891 #5 of 8 Archive leaderboard report
Multiple Instance Learning TCGA DTFD-MIL (MaxMinS) AUC 0.961 #5 of 8 Archive leaderboard report
Multiple Instance Learning TCGA DTFD-MIL (MaxS) ACC 0.868 #7 of 8 Archive leaderboard report
Multiple Instance Learning TCGA DTFD-MIL (MaxS) AUC 0.919 #7 of 8 Archive leaderboard report
Multiple Instance Learning TCGA DTFD-MIL (MAS) AUC 0.955 #8 of 8 Archive leaderboard report

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