Evaluating New AI Cell Foundation Models on Challenging Kidney Pathology Cases Unaddressed by Previous Foundation Models

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Main Authors: Wang, Runchen, Guo, Junlin, Lu, Siqi, Deng, Ruining, Lu, Zhengyi, Zhu, Yanfan, Yang, Yuechen, Qu, Chongyu, Wang, Yu, Zhao, Shilin, Chang, Catie, Wilkes, Mitchell, Yin, Mengmeng, Yang, Haichun, Huo, Yuankai
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Wang, Runchen
Guo, Junlin
Lu, Siqi
Deng, Ruining
Lu, Zhengyi
Zhu, Yanfan
Yang, Yuechen
Qu, Chongyu
Wang, Yu
Zhao, Shilin
Chang, Catie
Wilkes, Mitchell
Yin, Mengmeng
Yang, Haichun
Huo, Yuankai
author_facet Wang, Runchen
Guo, Junlin
Lu, Siqi
Deng, Ruining
Lu, Zhengyi
Zhu, Yanfan
Yang, Yuechen
Qu, Chongyu
Wang, Yu
Zhao, Shilin
Chang, Catie
Wilkes, Mitchell
Yin, Mengmeng
Yang, Haichun
Huo, Yuankai
contents Accurate cell nuclei segmentation is critical for downstream tasks in kidney pathology and remains a major challenge due to the morphological diversity and imaging variability of renal tissues. While our prior work has evaluated early-generation AI cell foundation models in this domain, the effectiveness of recent cell foundation models remains unclear. In this study, we benchmark advanced AI cell foundation models (2025), including CellViT++ variants and Cellpose-SAM, against three widely used cell foundation models developed prior to 2024, using a diverse large-scale set of kidney image patches within a human-in-the-loop rating framework. We further performed fusion-based ensemble evaluation and model agreement analysis to assess the segmentation capabilities of the different models. Our results show that CellViT++ [Virchow] yields the highest standalone performance with 40.3% of predictions rated as "Good" on a curated set of 2,091 challenging samples, outperforming all prior models. In addition, our fused model achieves 62.2% "Good" predictions and only 0.4% "Bad", substantially reducing segmentation errors. Notably, the fusion model (2025) successfully resolved the majority of challenging cases that remained unaddressed in our previous study. These findings demonstrate the potential of AI cell foundation model development in renal pathology and provide a curated dataset of challenging samples to support future kidney-specific model refinement.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_01287
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Evaluating New AI Cell Foundation Models on Challenging Kidney Pathology Cases Unaddressed by Previous Foundation Models
Wang, Runchen
Guo, Junlin
Lu, Siqi
Deng, Ruining
Lu, Zhengyi
Zhu, Yanfan
Yang, Yuechen
Qu, Chongyu
Wang, Yu
Zhao, Shilin
Chang, Catie
Wilkes, Mitchell
Yin, Mengmeng
Yang, Haichun
Huo, Yuankai
Quantitative Methods
Artificial Intelligence
Accurate cell nuclei segmentation is critical for downstream tasks in kidney pathology and remains a major challenge due to the morphological diversity and imaging variability of renal tissues. While our prior work has evaluated early-generation AI cell foundation models in this domain, the effectiveness of recent cell foundation models remains unclear. In this study, we benchmark advanced AI cell foundation models (2025), including CellViT++ variants and Cellpose-SAM, against three widely used cell foundation models developed prior to 2024, using a diverse large-scale set of kidney image patches within a human-in-the-loop rating framework. We further performed fusion-based ensemble evaluation and model agreement analysis to assess the segmentation capabilities of the different models. Our results show that CellViT++ [Virchow] yields the highest standalone performance with 40.3% of predictions rated as "Good" on a curated set of 2,091 challenging samples, outperforming all prior models. In addition, our fused model achieves 62.2% "Good" predictions and only 0.4% "Bad", substantially reducing segmentation errors. Notably, the fusion model (2025) successfully resolved the majority of challenging cases that remained unaddressed in our previous study. These findings demonstrate the potential of AI cell foundation model development in renal pathology and provide a curated dataset of challenging samples to support future kidney-specific model refinement.
title Evaluating New AI Cell Foundation Models on Challenging Kidney Pathology Cases Unaddressed by Previous Foundation Models
topic Quantitative Methods
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01287