# Standardizing Medical Images at Scale for AI

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.15980 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.15980/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 10 of its 24 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Mar 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [Densely Connected Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.06993/) (2016)
- [WILDS: A Benchmark of in-the-Wild Distribution Shifts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.07421/) (2020)
- [A Survey on Deep Learning in Medical Image Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.05747/) (2017)
- [Deep Learning for Medical Image Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.08987/) (2017)
- [Gradient Matching for Domain Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.09937/) (2021)
- [Improving Out-of-Distribution Robustness via Selective Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.00299/) (2022)
- [Pareto Invariant Risk Minimization: Towards Mitigating the Optimization Dilemma in Out-of-Distribution Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.07766/) (2022)
- [Out-of-Domain Robustness via Targeted Augmentations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.11861/) (2023)
- [VEViD: Vision Enhancement via Virtual diffraction and coherent Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.12366/) (2022)
- [PhyCV: The First Physics-inspired Computer Vision Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.12531/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Deep learning has achieved remarkable success in medical image analysis, yet its performance remains highly sensitive to the heterogeneity of clinical data. Differences in imaging hardware, staining protocols, and acquisition conditions produce substantial domain shifts that degrade model generalization across institutions. Here we present a physics-based data preprocessing framework based on the PhyCV (Physics-Inspired Computer Vision) family of algorithms, which standardizes medical images through deterministic transformations derived from optical physics. The framework models images as spatially varying optical fields that undergo a virtual diffractive propagation followed by coherent phase detection. This process suppresses non-semantic variability such as color and illumination differences while preserving diagnostically relevant texture and structural features. When applied to histopathological images from the Camelyon17-WILDS benchmark, PhyCV preprocessing improves out-of-distribution breast-cancer classification accuracy from 70.8% (Empirical Risk Minimization baseline) to 90.9%, matching or exceeding data-augmentation and domain-generalization approaches at negligible computational cost. Because the transform is physically interpretable, parameterizable, and differentiable, it can be deployed as a fixed preprocessing stage or integrated into end-to-end learning. These results establish PhyCV as a generalizable data refinery for medical imaging-one that harmonizes heterogeneous datasets through first-principles physics, improving robustness, interpretability, and reproducibility in clinical AI systems.