# CrossFusion: A Multi-Scale Cross-Attention Convolutional Fusion Model for Cancer Survival Prediction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.02064 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.02064/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 13 of its 27 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Mar 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Attention-based Deep Multiple Instance Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.04712/) (2018)
- [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)
- [Dual-stream Multiple Instance Learning Network for Whole Slide Image Classification with Self-supervised Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.08939/) (2020)
- [Scaling Vision Transformers to Gigapixel Images via Hierarchical Self-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.02647/) (2022)
- [Quilt-1M: One Million Image-Text Pairs for Histopathology](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.11207/) (2023)
- [Whole Slide Images are 2D Point Clouds: Context-Aware Survival Prediction using Patch-based Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.13048/) (2021)
- [Multimodal Prototyping for cancer survival prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.00224/) (2024)
- [Differentiable Zooming for Multiple Instance Learning on Whole-Slide Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.12454/) (2022)
- [Cross-scale Multi-instance Learning for Pathological Image Diagnosis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.00216/) (2023)
- [SCMIL: Sparse Context-aware Multiple Instance Learning for Predicting Cancer Survival Probability Distribution in Whole Slide Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.00664/) (2024)
- [Generating Seamless Virtual Immunohistochemical Whole Slide Images with Content and Color Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.01072/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Cancer survival prediction from whole slide images (WSIs) is a challenging task in computational pathology due to the large size, irregular shape, and high granularity of the WSIs. These characteristics make it difficult to capture the full spectrum of patterns, from subtle cellular abnormalities to complex tissue interactions, which are crucial for accurate prognosis. To address this, we propose CrossFusion, a novel multi-scale feature integration framework that extracts and fuses information from patches across different magnification levels. By effectively modeling both scale-specific patterns and their interactions, CrossFusion generates a rich feature set that enhances survival prediction accuracy. We validate our approach across six cancer types from public datasets, demonstrating significant improvements over existing state-of-the-art methods. Moreover, when coupled with domain-specific feature extraction backbones, our method shows further gains in prognostic performance compared to general-purpose backbones. The source code is available at: https://github.com/RustinS/CrossFusion