# ProsMAE: Multi-Source MAE Pretraining for ISUP Grade Classification

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.08162 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.08162/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 11 of its 18 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Jul 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [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)
- [Masked Autoencoders Are Scalable Vision Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.06377/) (2021)
- [Data Efficient and Weakly Supervised Computational Pathology on Whole Slide Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.09666/) (2020)
- [Quantifying the effects of data augmentation and stain color normalization in convolutional neural networks for computational pathology](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.06543/) (2019)
- [Self supervised contrastive learning for digital histopathology](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13971/) (2020)
- [BRACS: A Dataset for BReAst Carcinoma Subtyping in H&E Histology Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.04740/) (2021)
- [Mitosis domain generalization in histopathology images -- The MIDOG challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03742/) (2022)
- [A Clinical Benchmark of Public Self-Supervised Pathology Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.06508/) (2024)
- [MAESIL: Masked Autoencoder for Enhanced Self-supervised Medical Image Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.00514/) (2026)
- [Beyond ViT Tokens: Masked-Diffusion Pretrained Convolutional Pathology Foundation Model for Cell-Level Dense Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.08276/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Whole slide images (WSIs) provide rich diagnostic information for computational pathology, but their gigapixel scale, stain variation, scanner differences, tissue artifacts, and limited expert annotation make robust model training challenging. This paper presents a multi-source Masked Autoencoder (MAE) framework, named ProsMAE, for histopathology representation learning. Tiles from Prostate cANcer graDe Assessment (PANDA), CAncer MEtastases in LYmph nOdes challeNge 2017 (CAMELYON17), and BReAst Carcinoma Subtyping (BRACS) are used for ProsMAE pretraining to expose the encoder to diverse tissue morphology and acquisition conditions. The learned encoder is transferred for International Society of Urological Pathology (ISUP) grade classification through ProsCLS, using a frozen encoder and a linear classification head. ProsMAE achieved a higher mean validation quadratic weighted kappa (QWK) than the vanilla MAE frozen linear-probe baseline under the evaluated disjoint PANDA split. Repeated-split evaluation remains necessary to further establish robustness across split compositions.