Priority-Aware Pathological Hierarchy Training for Multiple Instance Learning

Multiple Instance Learning (MIL) is increasingly being used as a support tool within clinical settings for pathological diagnosis decisions, achieving high performance and removing the annotation burden. However, existing approaches for clinical MIL tasks have not adequately addressed the priority issues that exist in relation to pathological symptoms and diagnostic classes, causing MIL models to ignore priority among classes. To overcome this clinical limitation of MIL, we propose a new method that addresses priority issues using two hierarchies: vertical inter-hierarchy and horizontal intra-hierarchy. The proposed method aligns MIL predictions across each hierarchical level and employs an implicit feature re-usability during training to facilitate clinically more serious classes within the same level. Experiments with real-world patient data show that the proposed method effectively reduces misdiagnosis and prioritizes more important symptoms in multiclass scenarios. Further analysis verifies the efficacy of the proposed components and qualitatively confirms the MIL predictions against challenging cases with multiple symptoms.

STEM image analysis based on deep learning: identification of vacancy defects and polymorphs of ${MoS_2}$

Scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) is an indispensable tool for atomic-resolution structural analysis for a wide range of materials. The conventional analysis of STEM images is an extensive hands-on process, which limits efficient handling of high-throughput data. Here we apply a fully convolutional network (FCN) for identification of important structural features of two-dimensional crystals. ResUNet, a type of FCN, is utilized in identifying sulfur vacancies and polymorph types of ${MoS_2}$ from atomic resolution STEM images. Efficient models are achieved based on training with simulated images in the presence of different levels of noise, aberrations, and carbon contamination. The accuracy of the FCN models toward extensive experimental STEM images is comparable to that of careful hands-on analysis. Our work provides a guideline on best practices to train a deep learning model for STEM image analysis and demonstrates FCN's application for efficient processing of a large volume of STEM data.