# EXAONEPath 1.0 Patch-level Foundation Model for Pathology

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.00380 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.00380/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 27 of its 53 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Aug 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 27 of 27)

- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [A Simple Framework for Contrastive Learning of Visual Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05709/) (2020)
- [ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.0575/) (2014)
- [Momentum Contrast for Unsupervised Visual Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.05722/) (2019)
- [Masked Autoencoders Are Scalable Vision Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.06377/) (2021)
- [Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14294/) (2021)
- [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)
- [An Empirical Study of Training Self-Supervised Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.02057/) (2021)
- [iBOT: Image BERT Pre-Training with Online Tokenizer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.07832/) (2021)
- [Data Efficient and Weakly Supervised Computational Pathology on Whole Slide Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.09666/) (2020)
- [TransMIL: Transformer based Correlated Multiple Instance Learning for Whole Slide Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.00908/) (2021)
- [Rotation Equivariant CNNs for Digital Pathology](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.03962/) (2018)
- [HoVer-Net: Simultaneous Segmentation and Classification of Nuclei in Multi-Tissue Histology Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.06499/) (2018)
- [Scaling Vision Transformers to Gigapixel Images via Hierarchical Self-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.02647/) (2022)
- [LongNet: Scaling Transformers to 1,000,000,000 Tokens](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.02486/) (2023)
- [Benchmarking Self-Supervised Learning on Diverse Pathology Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04690/) (2022)
- [Self supervised contrastive learning for digital histopathology](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13971/) (2020)
- [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)
- [RudolfV: A Foundation Model by Pathologists for Pathologists](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.04079/) (2024)
- [Structure-Preserving Multi-Domain Stain Color Augmentation using Style-Transfer with Disentangled Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.12357/) (2021)
- [Computational Pathology at Health System Scale -- Self-Supervised Foundation Models from Three Billion Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.07033/) (2023)
- [Self-Supervised Similarity Learning for Digital Pathology](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.08139/) (2019)
- [ConCL: Concept Contrastive Learning for Dense Prediction Pre-training in Pathology Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.06733/) (2022)
- [MultiPathGAN: Structure Preserving Stain Normalization using Unsupervised Multi-domain Adversarial Network with Perception Loss](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.09782/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Pathology Foundation Models are Scanner Sensitive: Benchmark and Mitigation with Contrastive ScanGen Loss](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.22092/) (2025)
- [ChatEXAONEPath: An Expert-level Multimodal Large Language Model for Histopathology Using Whole Slide Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13023/) (2025)
- [EXAONE Path 2.0: Pathology Foundation Model with End-to-End Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.06639/) (2025)
- [Identifying actionable driver mutations in lung cancer using an efficient Asymmetric Transformer Decoder](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.02431/) (2025)
- [PANDA-PLUS-Bench: A Clinical Benchmark for Evaluating Robustness of AI Foundation Models in Prostate Cancer Diagnosis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.14922/) (2025)
- [Mitigating Batch Effects in Histopathology via Language-Mediated Robust Embedding Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.28697/) (2026)
- [The Good, the Bad, and the Brittle: Benchmarking Robustness and Generalisation of Histopathology Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.04401/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent advancements in digital pathology have led to the development of numerous foundational models that utilize self-supervised learning on patches extracted from gigapixel whole slide images (WSIs). While this approach leverages vast amounts of unlabeled data, we have discovered a significant issue: features extracted from these self-supervised models tend to cluster by individual WSIs, a phenomenon we term WSI-specific feature collapse. This problem can potentially limit the model's generalization ability and performance on various downstream tasks. To address this issue, we introduce EXAONEPath, a novel foundational model trained on patches that have undergone stain normalization. Stain normalization helps reduce color variability arising from different laboratories and scanners, enabling the model to learn more consistent features. EXAONEPath is trained using 285,153,903 patches extracted from a total of 34,795 WSIs. Our experiments demonstrate that EXAONEPath significantly mitigates the feature collapse problem, indicating that the model has learned more generalized features rather than overfitting to individual WSI characteristics. We compared EXAONEPath with state-of-the-art models across six downstream task datasets, and our results show that EXAONEPath achieves superior performance relative to the number of WSIs used and the model's parameter count. This suggests that the application of stain normalization has substantially improved the model's efficiency and generalization capabilities.