Hierarchical Classification for Improved Histopathology Image Analysis
This work addresses the need for better diagnostic tools in pathology by incorporating hierarchical relationships, though it appears incremental as it builds upon existing multiple instance learning methods.
The paper tackled the problem of whole-slide image analysis in pathology by proposing HiClass, a hierarchical classification framework that improves both coarse-grained and fine-grained classification, achieving superior performance on a gastric biopsy dataset with 4 coarse and 14 fine classes.
Whole-slide image analysis is essential for diagnostic tasks in pathology, yet existing deep learning methods primarily rely on flat classification, ignoring hierarchical relationships among class labels. In this study, we propose HiClass, a hierarchical classification framework for improved histopathology image analysis, that enhances both coarse-grained and fine-grained WSI classification. Built based upon a multiple instance learning approach, HiClass extends it by introducing bidirectional feature integration that facilitates information exchange between coarse-grained and fine-grained feature representations, effectively learning hierarchical features. Moreover, we introduce tailored loss functions, including hierarchical consistency loss, intra- and inter-class distance loss, and group-wise cross-entropy loss, to further optimize hierarchical learning. We assess the performance of HiClass on a gastric biopsy dataset with 4 coarse-grained and 14 fine-grained classes, achieving superior classification performance for both coarse-grained classification and fine-grained classification. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of HiClass in improving WSI classification by capturing coarse-grained and fine-grained histopathological characteristics.