Magnification-Aware Distillation (MAD): A Self-Supervised Framework for Unified Representation Learning in Gigapixel Whole-Slide Images

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Hauptverfasser: Gokmen, Mahmut S., Klusty, Mitchell A., Nelson, Peter T., Neltner, Allison M., Cheung, Sen-Ching Samson, Pearce, Thomas M., Gutman, David A, Dugger, Brittany N., Bisht, Devavrat S., Flanagan, Margaret E., Bumgardner, V. K. Cody
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Gokmen, Mahmut S.
Klusty, Mitchell A.
Nelson, Peter T.
Neltner, Allison M.
Cheung, Sen-Ching Samson
Pearce, Thomas M.
Gutman, David A
Dugger, Brittany N.
Bisht, Devavrat S.
Flanagan, Margaret E.
Bumgardner, V. K. Cody
author_facet Gokmen, Mahmut S.
Klusty, Mitchell A.
Nelson, Peter T.
Neltner, Allison M.
Cheung, Sen-Ching Samson
Pearce, Thomas M.
Gutman, David A
Dugger, Brittany N.
Bisht, Devavrat S.
Flanagan, Margaret E.
Bumgardner, V. K. Cody
contents Whole-slide images (WSIs) contain tissue information distributed across multiple magnification levels, yet most self-supervised methods treat these scales as independent views. This separation prevents models from learning representations that remain stable when resolution changes, a key requirement for practical neuropathology workflows. This study introduces Magnification-Aware Distillation (MAD), a self-supervised strategy that links low-magnification context with spatially aligned high-magnification detail, enabling the model to learn how coarse tissue structure relates to fine cellular patterns. The resulting foundation model, MAD-NP, is trained entirely through this cross-scale correspondence without annotations. A linear classifier trained only on 10x embeddings maintains 96.7% of its performance when applied to unseen 40x tiles, demonstrating strong resolution-invariant representation learning. Segmentation outputs remain consistent across magnifications, preserving anatomical boundaries and minimizing noise. These results highlight the feasibility of scalable, magnification-robust WSI analysis using a unified embedding space
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_14796
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Magnification-Aware Distillation (MAD): A Self-Supervised Framework for Unified Representation Learning in Gigapixel Whole-Slide Images
Gokmen, Mahmut S.
Klusty, Mitchell A.
Nelson, Peter T.
Neltner, Allison M.
Cheung, Sen-Ching Samson
Pearce, Thomas M.
Gutman, David A
Dugger, Brittany N.
Bisht, Devavrat S.
Flanagan, Margaret E.
Bumgardner, V. K. Cody
Image and Video Processing
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
Whole-slide images (WSIs) contain tissue information distributed across multiple magnification levels, yet most self-supervised methods treat these scales as independent views. This separation prevents models from learning representations that remain stable when resolution changes, a key requirement for practical neuropathology workflows. This study introduces Magnification-Aware Distillation (MAD), a self-supervised strategy that links low-magnification context with spatially aligned high-magnification detail, enabling the model to learn how coarse tissue structure relates to fine cellular patterns. The resulting foundation model, MAD-NP, is trained entirely through this cross-scale correspondence without annotations. A linear classifier trained only on 10x embeddings maintains 96.7% of its performance when applied to unseen 40x tiles, demonstrating strong resolution-invariant representation learning. Segmentation outputs remain consistent across magnifications, preserving anatomical boundaries and minimizing noise. These results highlight the feasibility of scalable, magnification-robust WSI analysis using a unified embedding space
title Magnification-Aware Distillation (MAD): A Self-Supervised Framework for Unified Representation Learning in Gigapixel Whole-Slide Images
topic Image and Video Processing
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.14796