# Continual Learning for Tumor Classification in Histopathology Images

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.03609 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.03609/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 16 of its 34 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Aug 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Overcoming catastrophic forgetting in neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00796/) (2016)
- [Learning without Forgetting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.09282/) (2016)
- [iCaRL: Incremental Classifier and Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07725/) (2016)
- [Gradient Episodic Memory for Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.08840/) (2017)
- [Progressive Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.04671/) (2016)
- [Continual Learning with Deep Generative Replay](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.08690/) (2017)
- [Efficient Lifelong Learning with A-GEM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.00420/) (2018)
- [Overcoming catastrophic forgetting with hard attention to the task](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.01423/) (2018)
- [Three scenarios for continual learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.07734/) (2019)
- [Progress & Compress: A scalable framework for continual learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.06370/) (2018)
- [Continual Prototype Evolution: Learning Online from Non-Stationary Data Streams](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.00919/) (2020)
- [Selfless Sequential Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.05421/) (2018)
- [Continual Learning for Domain Adaptation in Chest X-ray Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.05922/) (2020)
- [Continual Learning with Bayesian Model based on a Fixed Pre-trained Feature Extractor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.13349/) (2022)
- [Towards continual learning in medical imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.02496/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [ConSlide: Asynchronous Hierarchical Interaction Transformer with Breakup-Reorganize Rehearsal for Continual Whole Slide Image Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.13324/) (2023)
- [Continual Learning in Medical Image Analysis: A Comprehensive Review of Recent Advancements and Future Prospects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.17004/) (2023)
- [Continual Domain Incremental Learning for Privacy-aware Digital Pathology](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.06455/) (2024)
- [CCSI: Continual Class-Specific Impression for Data-free Class Incremental Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.05631/) (2024)
- [Pathological Prior-Guided Multiple Instance Learning For Mitigating Catastrophic Forgetting in Breast Cancer Whole Slide Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06056/) (2025)
- [CoRE: Concept-Reasoning Expansion for Continual Brain Lesion Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.25376/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent years have seen great advancements in the development of deep learning models for histopathology image analysis in digital pathology applications, evidenced by the increasingly common deployment of these models in both research and clinical settings. Although such models have shown unprecedented performance in solving fundamental computational tasks in DP applications, they suffer from catastrophic forgetting when adapted to unseen data with transfer learning. With an increasing need for deep learning models to handle ever changing data distributions, including evolving patient population and new diagnosis assays, continual learning models that alleviate model forgetting need to be introduced in DP based analysis. However, to our best knowledge, there is no systematic study of such models for DP-specific applications. Here, we propose CL scenarios in DP settings, where histopathology image data from different sources/distributions arrive sequentially, the knowledge of which is integrated into a single model without training all the data from scratch. We then established an augmented dataset for colorectal cancer H&E classification to simulate shifts of image appearance and evaluated CL model performance in the proposed CL scenarios. We leveraged a breast tumor H&E dataset along with the colorectal cancer to evaluate CL from different tumor types. In addition, we evaluated CL methods in an online few-shot setting under the constraints of annotation and computational resources. We revealed promising results of CL in DP applications, potentially paving the way for application of these methods in clinical practice.