# Contrastive-Based Deep Embeddings for Label Noise-Resilient Histopathology Image Classification

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.07605 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.07605/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 36 of its 53 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Apr 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 36)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [A Simple Framework for Contrastive Learning of Visual Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05709/) (2020)
- [Momentum Contrast for Unsupervised Visual Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.05722/) (2019)
- [Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14294/) (2021)
- [SGDR: Stochastic Gradient Descent with Warm Restarts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.03983/) (2016)
- [Unsupervised Learning of Visual Features by Contrasting Cluster Assignments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09882/) (2020)
- [Improved Baselines with Momentum Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.04297/) (2020)
- [Barlow Twins: Self-Supervised Learning via Redundancy Reduction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.03230/) (2021)
- [Understanding deep learning requires rethinking generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.03530/) (2016)
- [An Empirical Study of Training Self-Supervised Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.02057/) (2021)
- [Co-teaching: Robust Training of Deep Neural Networks with Extremely Noisy Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.06872/) (2018)
- [Generalized Cross Entropy Loss for Training Deep Neural Networks with Noisy Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.07836/) (2018)
- [iBOT: Image BERT Pre-Training with Online Tokenizer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.07832/) (2021)
- [DivideMix: Learning with Noisy Labels as Semi-supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.07394/) (2020)
- [Robust Loss Functions under Label Noise for Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.09482/) (2017)
- [Rotation Equivariant CNNs for Digital Pathology](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.03962/) (2018)
- [How does Disagreement Help Generalization against Label Corruption?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.04215/) (2019)
- [Normalized Loss Functions for Deep Learning with Noisy Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.13554/) (2020)
- [CleanNet: Transfer Learning for Scalable Image Classifier Training with Label Noise](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.07131/) (2017)
- [Learning to Learn from Noisy Labeled Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.05214/) (2018)
- [Benchmarking Self-Supervised Learning on Diverse Pathology Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04690/) (2022)
- [Virchow: A Million-Slide Digital Pathology Foundation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.07778/) (2023)
- [A Petri Dish for Histopathology Image Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.12355/) (2021)
- [Learning with Confident Examples: Rank Pruning for Robust Classification with Noisy Labels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.01936/) (2017)
- [Towards a Visual-Language Foundation Model for Computational Pathology](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.12914/) (2023)
- [Co-learning: Learning from Noisy Labels with Self-supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.04063/) (2021)
- [Hard Sample Aware Noise Robust Learning for Histopathology Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03694/) (2021)
- [Investigating Why Contrastive Learning Benefits Robustness Against Label Noise](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.12498/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Rep-GLS: Report-Guided Generalized Label Smoothing for Robust Disease Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.02495/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent advancements in deep learning have proven highly effective in medical image classification, notably within histopathology. However, noisy labels represent a critical challenge in histopathology image classification, where accurate annotations are vital for training robust deep learning models. Indeed, deep neural networks can easily overfit label noise, leading to severe degradations in model performance. While numerous public pathology foundation models have emerged recently, none have evaluated their resilience to label noise. Through thorough empirical analyses across multiple datasets, we exhibit the label noise resilience property of embeddings extracted from foundation models trained in a self-supervised contrastive manner. We demonstrate that training with such embeddings substantially enhances label noise robustness when compared to non-contrastive-based ones as well as commonly used noise-resilient methods. Our results unequivocally underline the superiority of contrastive learning in effectively mitigating the label noise challenge. Code is publicly available at https://github.com/LucasDedieu/NoiseResilientHistopathology.
