Human-interpretable image features derived from densely mapped cancer pathology slides predict diverse molecular phenotypes

Nat Commun. 2021 Mar 12;12(1):1613. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-21896-9.

Abstract

Computational methods have made substantial progress in improving the accuracy and throughput of pathology workflows for diagnostic, prognostic, and genomic prediction. Still, lack of interpretability remains a significant barrier to clinical integration. We present an approach for predicting clinically-relevant molecular phenotypes from whole-slide histopathology images using human-interpretable image features (HIFs). Our method leverages >1.6 million annotations from board-certified pathologists across >5700 samples to train deep learning models for cell and tissue classification that can exhaustively map whole-slide images at two and four micron-resolution. Cell- and tissue-type model outputs are combined into 607 HIFs that quantify specific and biologically-relevant characteristics across five cancer types. We demonstrate that these HIFs correlate with well-known markers of the tumor microenvironment and can predict diverse molecular signatures (AUROC 0.601-0.864), including expression of four immune checkpoint proteins and homologous recombination deficiency, with performance comparable to 'black-box' methods. Our HIF-based approach provides a comprehensive, quantitative, and interpretable window into the composition and spatial architecture of the tumor microenvironment.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Deep Learning
  • Humans
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
  • Neoplasms / classification*
  • Neoplasms / diagnostic imaging*
  • Neoplasms / pathology*
  • Pathology, Molecular / methods*
  • Phenotype*
  • Precision Medicine
  • Tumor Microenvironment