# A Unified DINOv2-Based Framework for LVEF Estimation, GLS Dysfunction Classification, and Early Cardiotoxicity Prediction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.14750 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.14750/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 10 of its 21 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 Aug 2026.

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

- [Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.02531/) (2015)
- [Parameter-Efficient Transfer Learning for NLP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.00751/) (2019)
- [Delving Deep into Rectifiers: Surpassing Human-Level Performance on ImageNet Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.01852/) (2015)
- [A Rank Stabilization Scaling Factor for Fine-Tuning with LoRA](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03732/) (2023)
- [Ultrasound Video Transformers for Cardiac Ejection Fraction Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.00977/) (2021)
- [EchoGNN: Explainable Ejection Fraction Estimation with Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.14003/) (2022)
- [EchoCoTr: Estimation of the Left Ventricular Ejection Fraction from Spatiotemporal Echocardiography](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.04242/) (2022)
- [Latent Motion Profiling for Annotation-free Cardiac Phase Detection in Adult and Fetal Echocardiography Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.05154/) (2025)
- [Investigating Deep Learning Models for Ejection Fraction Estimation from Echocardiography Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.22657/) (2025)
- [EchoRisk: A Multicentre Echocardiography Dataset and Benchmark for Cardio-Oncology](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.01039/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) estimation (Task 1), global longitu-dinal strain (GLS)-based dysfunction classification (Task 2), and early cardi-otoxicity prediction (Task 3) provide complementary information for cardio-oncology assessment. LVEF reflects macroscopic ventricular volume chang-es as the clinical standard, whereas GLS captures subtle myocardial defor-mation, indicating subclinical cardiotoxicity before overt LVEF decline. Fur-thermore, predicting cardiotoxicity from baseline echocardiography prior to treatment enables preventive interventions at an early stage. To address these three tasks, we employ a DINOv2-based framework with task-specific adap-tation and prediction heads. Built upon a frozen foundation encoder, the framework incorporates parameter-efficient Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) and temporal aggregation to learn task-specialized representations, ensuring robust generalization. Crucially, during inference, it operates in a fully cycle-detection-free and phase-free manner, requiring neither cardiac cycle seg-mentation nor explicit End-Diastolic/End-Systolic (ED/ES) annotations. Ad-ditionally, we introduce an ED/ES-guided 2D/3D hybrid multi-view regres-sion model specifically to optimize Task 1. On a patient-level split containing 1,203 training videos from 237 patients and 300 validation videos from 59 independent patients, the DINOv2-based framework achieved a mean abso-lute error (MAE) of 5.03% for Task 1, an AUC-ROC of 76.48% for Task 2, and an AUC-ROC of 70.26% for Task 3. For Task 1, the specialized ED/ES-guided model further improves performance, achieving an MAE of 4.64%. This framework demonstrates the effectiveness of foundation model repre-sentations across diverse cardio-oncology tasks and the additional benefit of physiology-guided modeling for accurate LVEF estimation.
