UWarp: A Whole Slide Image Registration Pipeline to Characterize Scanner-Induced Local Domain Shift

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Schieb, Antoine, Hadjadji, Bilal, Valderrama, Natalia Fernanda, Mweze, Daniel Tshokola, Derangère, Valentin, Arnould, Laurent, Ladoire, Sylvain, Lalande, Alain, Fiorin, Alessio, Pablo, Carlos López, Borràs, Noèlia Gallardo, Abdelazeez, Shrief, Della Mea, Vincenzo, Korzynska, Anna, Morel, Louis-Oscar, Vinçon, Nathan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866908445373890560
author Schieb, Antoine
Hadjadji, Bilal
Valderrama, Natalia Fernanda
Mweze, Daniel Tshokola
Derangère, Valentin
Arnould, Laurent
Ladoire, Sylvain
Lalande, Alain
Fiorin, Alessio
Pablo, Carlos López
Borràs, Noèlia Gallardo
Abdelazeez, Shrief
Della Mea, Vincenzo
Korzynska, Anna
Morel, Louis-Oscar
Vinçon, Nathan
author_facet Schieb, Antoine
Hadjadji, Bilal
Valderrama, Natalia Fernanda
Mweze, Daniel Tshokola
Derangère, Valentin
Arnould, Laurent
Ladoire, Sylvain
Lalande, Alain
Fiorin, Alessio
Pablo, Carlos López
Borràs, Noèlia Gallardo
Abdelazeez, Shrief
Della Mea, Vincenzo
Korzynska, Anna
Morel, Louis-Oscar
Vinçon, Nathan
contents Histopathology slide digitization introduces scanner-induced domain shift that can significantly impact computational pathology models based on deep learning methods. In the state-of-the-art, this shift is often characterized at a broad scale (slide-level or dataset-level) but not patch-level, which limits our comprehension of the impact of localized tissue characteristics on the accuracy of the deep learning models. To address this challenge, we present a domain shift analysis framework based on UWarp, a novel registration tool designed to accurately align histological slides scanned under varying conditions. UWarp employs a hierarchical registration approach, combining global affine transformations with fine-grained local corrections to achieve robust tissue patch alignment. We evaluate UWarp using two private datasets, CypathLung and BosomShieldBreast, containing whole slide images scanned by multiple devices. Our experiments demonstrate that UWarp outperforms existing open-source registration methods, achieving a median target registration error (TRE) of less than 4 pixels (<1 micrometer at 40x magnification) while significantly reducing computational time. Additionally, we apply UWarp to characterize scanner-induced local domain shift in the predictions of Breast-NEOprAIdict, a deep learning model for breast cancer pathological response prediction. We find that prediction variability is strongly correlated with tissue density on a given patch. Our findings highlight the importance of localized domain shift analysis and suggest that UWarp can serve as a valuable tool for improving model robustness and domain adaptation strategies in computational pathology.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_20653
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle UWarp: A Whole Slide Image Registration Pipeline to Characterize Scanner-Induced Local Domain Shift
Schieb, Antoine
Hadjadji, Bilal
Valderrama, Natalia Fernanda
Mweze, Daniel Tshokola
Derangère, Valentin
Arnould, Laurent
Ladoire, Sylvain
Lalande, Alain
Fiorin, Alessio
Pablo, Carlos López
Borràs, Noèlia Gallardo
Abdelazeez, Shrief
Della Mea, Vincenzo
Korzynska, Anna
Morel, Louis-Oscar
Vinçon, Nathan
Image and Video Processing
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Histopathology slide digitization introduces scanner-induced domain shift that can significantly impact computational pathology models based on deep learning methods. In the state-of-the-art, this shift is often characterized at a broad scale (slide-level or dataset-level) but not patch-level, which limits our comprehension of the impact of localized tissue characteristics on the accuracy of the deep learning models. To address this challenge, we present a domain shift analysis framework based on UWarp, a novel registration tool designed to accurately align histological slides scanned under varying conditions. UWarp employs a hierarchical registration approach, combining global affine transformations with fine-grained local corrections to achieve robust tissue patch alignment. We evaluate UWarp using two private datasets, CypathLung and BosomShieldBreast, containing whole slide images scanned by multiple devices. Our experiments demonstrate that UWarp outperforms existing open-source registration methods, achieving a median target registration error (TRE) of less than 4 pixels (<1 micrometer at 40x magnification) while significantly reducing computational time. Additionally, we apply UWarp to characterize scanner-induced local domain shift in the predictions of Breast-NEOprAIdict, a deep learning model for breast cancer pathological response prediction. We find that prediction variability is strongly correlated with tissue density on a given patch. Our findings highlight the importance of localized domain shift analysis and suggest that UWarp can serve as a valuable tool for improving model robustness and domain adaptation strategies in computational pathology.
title UWarp: A Whole Slide Image Registration Pipeline to Characterize Scanner-Induced Local Domain Shift
topic Image and Video Processing
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.20653