让病理图像分类的依据更可靠,能查证、可还原、不冗余。
GCE-MIL: Faithful and Recoverable Evidence for Multiple Instance Learning in Whole-Slide Imaging

- 用可验证的三准则直接优化证据选择,而非依赖注意力权重。
- 在9个数据集上平均提升分类准确率0.024,生存预测能力0.014。
- 结果可复现且推理提速5倍,适合临床诊断可信性要求高的场景。
多实例学习(MIL)是全切片图像(WSI)分类与生存预测的标准方法,其基于注意力的模型将局部块特征聚合为整体预测。然而,注意力权重虽被当作诊断依据,却仅针对分类目标优化,无法真实反映哪些切片真正支持诊断,导致三大问题:选中的切片不足(仅保留它们会使宏平均F1下降0.078)、冗余(移除后预测几乎不变)、不可复现(连续注意力值与离散选择的切片组不一致)。本文提出GCE-MIL,通过显式优化三个标准——充分性、必要性与可恢复性(S/N/R),而非依赖分类任务间接获得证据。该方法为骨干网络无关,采用三种注入模式与组件:对齐领域概念的定位机制、作为可微代理的噪声-或覆盖机制,以及通过边缘引导修复实现连续到离散选择的阈值+修复模块。在9种骨干网络和9个数据集(共81种配置)上,GCE-MIL平均提升宏平均F1 0.024,C指数0.014,连续-离散差距缩小4–7,互补退化提升2–4。结合可选的离散恢复后切片预过滤,推理速度最高提升5倍,同时保持0.989的完整袋利用率。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Multiple instance learning (MIL) is the standard approach for whole-slide image (WSI) classification and survival prediction, where attention-based models ag gregate patch features into slide-level predictions. These models treat attention weights as evidence for their predictions, but attention is optimized for classi fication, not for identifying which patches actually support the diagnosis. This conflation leads to three failures: selected patches are insufficient (keeping them alone drops Macro-F1 by 0.078), unnecessary (removing them barely changes the prediction), and unrecoverable (continuous attention scores disagree with discrete patch subsets used at inference). The central premise is that evidence quality should be optimized directly through explicit criteria- Sufficiency, Necessity, and Recov erability (S/N/R)- rather than inherited as a byproduct of classification. GCE-MIL is a backbone-agnostic wrapper implemented through three injection modes and three evidence components: a grounding mechanism that aligns selection with domain-specific concepts, noisy-OR coverage that acts as a differentiable proxy for interventional evidence search, and threshold-plus-repair recovery that converts continuous selectors into discrete subsets through marginal-guided repair. Across 9 backbones and 9 datasets (81 configurations), GCE-MIL improves average Macro-F1 by 0.024 and C-index by 0.014, reduces the continuous-discrete gap by 4-7, and increases complement degradation by 2-4. With optional tile prefiltering after discrete recovery, inference runs up to 5 faster while retaining 0.989 full-bag utility.
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