Computer Science > Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
arXiv:2603.08844 (cs)
[Submitted on 9 Mar 2026]
Title:A Lightweight Multi-Cancer Tumor Localization Framework for Deployable Digital Pathology
Authors:Brian Isett, Rebekah Dadey, Aofei Li, Ryan C. Augustin, Kate Smith, Aatur D. Singhi, Qiangqiang Gu, Riyue Bao
View a PDF of the paper titled A Lightweight Multi-Cancer Tumor Localization Framework for Deployable Digital Pathology, by Brian Isett and 7 other authors
View PDF
Abstract:Accurate localization of tumor regions from hematoxylin and eosin-stained whole-slide images is fundamental for translational research including spatial analysis, molecular profiling, and tissue architecture investigation. However, deep learning-based tumor detection trained within specific cancers may exhibit reduced robustness when applied across different tumor types. We investigated whether balanced training across cancers at modest scale can achieve high performance and generalize to unseen tumor types. A multi-cancer tumor localization model (MuCTaL) was trained on 79,984 non-overlapping tiles from four cancers (melanoma, hepatocellular carcinoma, colorectal cancer, and non-small cell lung cancer) using transfer learning with DenseNet169. The model achieved a tile-level ROC-AUC of 0.97 in validation data from the four training cancers, and 0.71 on an independent pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma cohort. A scalable inference workflow was built to generate spatial tumor probability heatmaps compatible with existing digital pathology tools. Code and models are publicly available at this https URL.
| Comments: | |
| Subjects: | Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI) |
| Cite as: | arXiv:2603.08844 [cs.CV] |
| (or arXiv:2603.08844v1 [cs.CV] for this version) | |
| https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.08844
Focus to learn more
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite
|
Full-text links:
Access Paper:
- View PDF
View a PDF of the paper titled A Lightweight Multi-Cancer Tumor Localization Framework for Deployable Digital Pathology, by Brian Isett and 7 other authors
References & Citations
export BibTeX citation
Loading...
Bookmark
Bibliographic Tools
Code, Data, Media
Demos
Related Papers
About arXivLabs
Bibliographic and Citation Tools
Bibliographic Explorer Toggle
Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?)
Connected Papers Toggle
Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?)
Litmaps Toggle
Litmaps (What is Litmaps?)
scite.ai Toggle
scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?)
Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article
alphaXiv Toggle
alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?)
Links to Code Toggle
CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?)
DagsHub Toggle
DagsHub (What is DagsHub?)
GotitPub Toggle
Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?)
Huggingface Toggle
Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?)
Links to Code Toggle
Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?)
ScienceCast Toggle
ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?)
Demos
Replicate Toggle
Replicate (What is Replicate?)
Spaces Toggle
Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?)
Spaces Toggle
TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?)
Recommenders and Search Tools
Link to Influence Flower
Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?)
Core recommender toggle
CORE Recommender (What is CORE?)
arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators
arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.
Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.
Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.
