Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Balik, Mihriban Kocak, Marttinen, Pekka, Safinianaini, Negar
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.03464
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866911250362925056
author Balik, Mihriban Kocak
Marttinen, Pekka
Safinianaini, Negar
author_facet Balik, Mihriban Kocak
Marttinen, Pekka
Safinianaini, Negar
contents Integrating different molecular layers, i.e., multiomics data, is crucial for unraveling the complexity of diseases; yet, most deep generative models either prioritize predictive performance at the expense of interpretability or enforce interpretability by linearizing the decoder, thereby weakening the network's nonlinear expressiveness. To overcome this tradeoff, we introduce POEMS: Product Of Experts for Interpretable Multiomics Integration using Sparse Decoding, an unsupervised probabilistic framework that preserves predictive performance while providing interpretability. POEMS provides interpretability without linearizing any part of the network by 1) mapping features to latent factors using sparse connections, which directly translates to biomarker discovery, 2) allowing for cross-omic associations through a shared latent space using product of experts model, and 3) reporting contributions of each omic by a gating network that adaptively computes their influence in the representation learning. Additionally, we present an efficient sparse decoder. In a cancer subtyping case study, POEMS achieves competitive clustering and classification performance while offering our novel set of interpretations, demonstrating that biomarker based insight and predictive accuracy can coexist in multiomics representation learning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_03464
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle POEMS: Product of Experts for Interpretable Multi-omic Integration using Sparse Decoding
Balik, Mihriban Kocak
Marttinen, Pekka
Safinianaini, Negar
Machine Learning
Integrating different molecular layers, i.e., multiomics data, is crucial for unraveling the complexity of diseases; yet, most deep generative models either prioritize predictive performance at the expense of interpretability or enforce interpretability by linearizing the decoder, thereby weakening the network's nonlinear expressiveness. To overcome this tradeoff, we introduce POEMS: Product Of Experts for Interpretable Multiomics Integration using Sparse Decoding, an unsupervised probabilistic framework that preserves predictive performance while providing interpretability. POEMS provides interpretability without linearizing any part of the network by 1) mapping features to latent factors using sparse connections, which directly translates to biomarker discovery, 2) allowing for cross-omic associations through a shared latent space using product of experts model, and 3) reporting contributions of each omic by a gating network that adaptively computes their influence in the representation learning. Additionally, we present an efficient sparse decoder. In a cancer subtyping case study, POEMS achieves competitive clustering and classification performance while offering our novel set of interpretations, demonstrating that biomarker based insight and predictive accuracy can coexist in multiomics representation learning.
title POEMS: Product of Experts for Interpretable Multi-omic Integration using Sparse Decoding
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.03464