Preprint DKFZ-2026-01804

http://join2-wiki.gsi.de/foswiki/pub/Main/Artwork/join2_logo100x88.png
Genetically Aligned Patient Representations Improve Hematological Diagnosis

 ;  ;  ;  ;  ;

2026

Report No.: arXiv:2605.29980

Abstract: Multimodal alignment of histopathology encoders with transcriptomic and genomic data has been shown to significantly improve performance in downstream diagnostic tasks. Hematological cytology is unique in that visual single-cell evaluation is often paired with cytogenetics and molecular genetics for blood cancer diagnosis. In this study, we present a framework to align single white blood cell images with chromosomal aberrations (karyotype) and somatic mutations from targeted gene panels. Our training strategy follows a two-stage approach: (i) self-supervised, vision-only pretraining of a transformer aggregator using an iBOT head on a cohort of over 1500 patients, and (ii) genetic alignment via supervised contrastive loss on acute myeloid leukemia patients. Our genetically aligned patient encoder improves hematological diagnostic tasks, outperforming slide-level histopathology foundation models. Additionally, the model provides off-the-shelf retrieval capabilities for diseases and genetic alterations. Incorporating genetic data into patient encoders increases the quality of patient representations, providing a framework that aligns with clinical diagnostic workflows and paves the way for future multimodal hematology-specific AI. The code and model weights are available at https://github.com/marrlab/GenBloom.


Note: Accepted for publication at the 29th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention - MICCAI 2026 / SCOPUS

Contributing Institute(s):
  1. DKTK Koordinierungsstelle München (MU01)
Research Program(s):
  1. 899 - ohne Topic (POF4-899) (POF4-899)

Appears in the scientific report 2026
Click to display QR Code for this record

The record appears in these collections:
Document types > Reports > Preprints
Public records
Publications database

 Record created 2026-07-20, last modified 2026-07-21


External link:
Download fulltext
Fulltext by arXiv.org
Rate this document:

Rate this document:
1
2
3
 
(Not yet reviewed)