mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Differentiable Zooming for Multiple Instance Learning on Whole-Slide Images

arXiv 2204.12454 ↗First posted 26 Apr 2022cs.CVcited by 43

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Abstract (arXiv)

Multiple Instance Learning (MIL) methods have become increasingly popular for classifying giga-pixel sized Whole-Slide Images (WSIs) in digital pathology. Most MIL methods operate at a single WSI magnification, by processing all the tissue patches. Such a formulation induces high computational requirements, and constrains the contextualization of the WSI-level representation to a single scale. A few MIL methods extend to multiple scales, but are computationally more demanding. In this paper, inspired by the pathological diagnostic process, we propose ZoomMIL, a method that learns to perform multi-level zooming in an end-to-end manner. ZoomMIL builds WSI representations by aggregating tissue-context information from multiple magnifications. The proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art MIL methods in WSI classification on two large datasets, while significantly reducing the computational demands with regard to Floating-Point Operations (FLOPs) and processing time by up to 40x.

Key facts. Cited by 43 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 31 of its 46 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 26 Apr 2022.

Builds on

31 of 46 references.

References · 31

  1. 2015Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognitioncited by 52,096
  2. 2014Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimizationcited by 37,240
  3. 2019PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Librarycited by 20,305
  4. 2018Attention-based Deep Multiple Instance Learningcited by 1,095
  5. 2020Data Efficient and Weakly Supervised Computational Pathology on Whole Slide Imagescited by 745
  6. 2021TransMIL: Transformer based Correlated Multiple Instance Learning for Whole Slide Image Classificationcited by 555
  7. 2020Dual-stream Multiple Instance Learning Network for Whole Slide Image Classification with Self-supervised Contrastive Learningcited by 478
  8. 2019Lookahead Optimizer: k steps forward, 1 step backcited by 336
  9. 2020Whole Slide Images based Cancer Survival Prediction using Attention Guided Deep Multiple Instance Learning Networkscited by 178
  10. 2021BRACS: A Dataset for BReAst Carcinoma Subtyping in H&E Histology Imagescited by 132
  11. 2020Deep Learning-based Computational Pathology Predicts Origins for Cancers of Unknown Primarycited by 89
  12. 2020Multi-scale Domain-adversarial Multiple-instance CNN for Cancer Subtype Classification with Unannotated Histopathological Imagescited by 81
19 more
  1. 2021Differentiable Patch Selection for Image Recognitioncited by 68
  2. 2018Neural Image Compression for Gigapixel Histopathology Image Analysiscited by 65
  3. 2021Hierarchical Graph Representations in Digital Pathologycited by 59
  4. 2017Constrained Deep Weak Supervision for Histopathology Image Segmentationcited by 51
  5. 2020Representation Learning of Histopathology Images using Graph Neural Networkscited by 40
  6. 2019Context-Aware Convolutional Neural Network for Grading of Colorectal Cancer Histology Imagescited by 39
  7. 2019Adaptive Weighting Multi-Field-of-View CNN for Semantic Segmentation in Pathologycited by 36
  8. 2020A Multi-resolution Model for Histopathology Image Classification and Localization with Multiple Instance Learningcited by 35
  9. 2021Accounting for Dependencies in Deep Learning Based Multiple Instance Learning for Whole Slide Imagingcited by 31
  10. 2019Processing Megapixel Images with Deep Attention-Sampling Modelscited by 29
  11. 2019Deep Multi-Magnification Networks for Multi-Class Breast Cancer Image Segmentationcited by 22
  12. 2021Learning Whole-Slide Segmentation from Inexact and Incomplete Labels using Tissue Graphscited by 22
  13. 2021HistoCartography: A Toolkit for Graph Analytics in Digital Pathologycited by 20
  14. 2021Efficient Classification of Very Large Images with Tiny Objectscited by 17
  15. 2019Learning Where to See: A Novel Attention Model for Automated Immunohistochemical Scoringcited by 14
  16. 2018Reinforced Auto-Zoom Net: Towards Accurate and Fast Breast Cancer Segmentation in Whole-slide Imagescited by 11
  17. 2021SparseConvMIL: Sparse Convolutional Context-Aware Multiple Instance Learning for Whole Slide Image Classificationcited by 10
  18. 2018Improving Whole Slide Segmentation Through Visual Context - A Systematic Studycited by 9
  19. 2017Context-aware stacked convolutional neural networks for classification of breast carcinomas in whole-slide histopathology imagescited by 7

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2022: 2; 2023: 13; 2024: 10; 2025: 10; 2026: 8.

43 papers.

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  1. 2023Visual Language Pretrained Multiple Instance Zero-Shot Transfer for Histopathology Imagescited by 134
  2. 2023Artificial Intelligence for Digital and Computational Pathologycited by 108
  3. 2024Morphological Prototyping for Unsupervised Slide Representation Learning in Computational Pathologycited by 72
  4. 2022Multiple Instance Learning for Digital Pathology: A Review on the State-of-the-Art, Limitations & Future Potentialcited by 54
  5. 2025Evidence-based diagnostic reasoning with multi-agent copilot for human pathologycited by 27
  6. 2023SI-MIL: Taming Deep MIL for Self-Interpretability in Gigapixel Histopathologycited by 25
  7. 2023Reproducibility in Multiple Instance Learning: A Case For Algorithmic Unit Testscited by 11
  8. 2023Weakly Supervised Joint Whole-Slide Segmentation and Classification in Prostate Cancercited by 10
  9. 2023MGCT: Mutual-Guided Cross-Modality Transformer for Survival Outcome Prediction using Integrative Histopathology-Genomic Featurescited by 8
  10. 2025Label-free Concept Based Multiple Instance Learning for Gigapixel Histopathologycited by 8
  11. 2025GECKO: Gigapixel Vision-Concept Contrastive Pretraining in Histopathologycited by 8
  12. 2024PATHS: A Hierarchical Transformer for Efficient Whole Slide Image Analysiscited by 7
31 more
  1. 2022Multi-Scale Relational Graph Convolutional Network for Multiple Instance Learning in Histopathology Imagescited by 6
  2. 2023Multi-scale Feature Alignment for Continual Learning of Unlabeled Domainscited by 6
  3. 2024Clinical-grade Multi-Organ Pathology Report Generation for Multi-scale Whole Slide Images via a Semantically Guided Medical Text Foundation Modelcited by 6
  4. 2023Dual Attention Model with Reinforcement Learning for Classification of Histology Whole-Slide Imagescited by 5
  5. 2024GRASP: GRAph-Structured Pyramidal Whole Slide Image Representationcited by 5
  6. 2024Gen-SIS: Generative Self-augmentation Improves Self-supervised Learningcited by 5
  7. 2023Towards Hierarchical Regional Transformer-based Multiple Instance Learningcited by 4
  8. 2023BROW: Better featuRes fOr Whole slide image based on self-distillationcited by 4
  9. 2023Unsupervised Mutual Transformer Learning for Multi-Gigapixel Whole Slide Image Classificationcited by 3
  10. 2025ModalTune: Fine-Tuning Slide-Level Foundation Models with Multi-Modal Information for Multi-task Learning in Digital Pathologycited by 2
  11. 2025Sequential Attention-based Sampling for Histopathological Analysiscited by 2
  12. 2026MMNavAgent: Multi-Magnification WSI Navigation Agent for Clinically Consistent Whole-Slide Analysiscited by 2
  13. 2026Thinking in Scales: Accelerating Gigapixel Pathology Image Analysis via Adaptive Continuous Reasoningcited by 2
  14. 2024Learning Spatial-Preserving Hierarchical Representations for Digital Pathologycited by 1
  15. 2025MExD: An Expert-Infused Diffusion Model for Whole-Slide Image Classificationcited by 1
  16. 2025One-Shot Neural Architecture Search with Network Similarity Directed Initialization for Pathological Image Classificationcited by 1
  17. 2023The Whole Pathological Slide Classification via Weakly Supervised Learningcited by 0
  18. 2023On the detection of Out-Of-Distribution samples in Multiple Instance Learningcited by 0
  19. 2024Towards Efficient Information Fusion: Concentric Dual Fusion Attention Based Multiple Instance Learning for Whole Slide Imagescited by 0
  20. 2024Efficient and Comprehensive Feature Extraction in Large Vision-Language Model for Pathology Analysiscited by 0
  21. 2024SEW: Self-calibration Enhanced Whole Slide Pathology Image Analysiscited by 0
  22. 2024On the Generalizability of Iterative Patch Selection for Memory-Efficient High-Resolution Image Classificationcited by 0
  23. 2025CrossFusion: A Multi-Scale Cross-Attention Convolutional Fusion Model for Cancer Survival Predictioncited by 0
  24. 2025Histomorphology-Guided Prototypical Multi-Instance Learning for Breast Cancer WSI Classificationcited by 0
  25. 2025Fourier Transform Multiple Instance Learning for Whole Slide Image Classificationcited by 0
  26. 2026PAIR-Former: Budgeted Relational Multi-Instance Learning for Functional miRNA Target Predictioncited by 0
  27. 2026Enabling Progressive Whole-slide Image Analysis with Multi-scale Pyramidal Networkcited by 0
  28. 2026Domain Adaptation Without the Compute Burden for Efficient Whole Slide Image Analysiscited by 0
  29. 2026LRMIL: Efficient Low-Resolution Multiple Instance Learning via High-Resolution Knowledge Distillation for Whole Slide Image Classificationcited by 0
  30. 2026Learning Where to Focus: Self-Supervised Multi-Scale ViTs for Histopathologycited by 0
  31. 2026Nonparametric Distribution Matching for Self-Supervised Whole-Slide Image Condensationcited by 0