Swarm learning for decentralized artificial intelligence in cancer histopathology
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
Abstract
Abstract Artificial Intelligence (AI) can extract clinically actionable information from medical image data. In cancer histopathology, AI can be used to predict the presence of molecular alterations directly from routine histopathology slides. However, training robust AI systems requires large datasets whose collection faces practical, ethical and legal obstacles. These obstacles could be overcome with swarm learning (SL) where partners jointly train AI models, while avoiding data transfer and monopolistic data governance. Here, for the first time, we demonstrate the successful use of SL in large, multicentric datasets of gigapixel histopathology images comprising over 5000 patients. We show that AI models trained using Swarm Learning can predict BRAF mutational status and microsatellite instability (MSI) directly from hematoxylin and eosin (H&E)-stained pathology slides of colorectal cancer (CRC). We trained AI models on three patient cohorts from Northern Ireland, Germany and the United States of America and validated the prediction performance in two independent datasets from the United Kingdom using SL-based AI models. Our data show that SL enables us to train AI models which outperform most locally trained models and perform on par with models which are centrally trained on the merged datasets. In addition, we show that SL-based AI models are data efficient and maintain a robust performance even if only subsets of local datasets are used for training. In the future, SL can be used to train distributed AI models for any histopathology image analysis tasks, overcoming the need for data transfer and without requiring institutions to give up control of the final AI model.
Authors 26
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Universitätsklinikum Aachen · RWTH Aachen University
Affiliation as printed
Department of Medicine III, University Hospital RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany
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Affiliation as printed
Pathology & Data Analytics, Leeds Institute of Medical Research at St James’s, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom
Pathology & Data Analytics, Leeds Institute of Medical Research at St James's, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom
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Affiliation as printed
Pathology & Data Analytics, Leeds Institute of Medical Research at St James’s, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom
Pathology & Data Analytics, Leeds Institute of Medical Research at St James's, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom
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Queen's University Belfast · Belfast Health and Social Care Trust
Affiliation as printed
Precision Medicine Centre of Excellence, Health Sciences Building, The Patrick G Johnston Centre for Cancer Research, Queen’s University Belfast, United Kingdom
Regional Molecular Diagnostic Service, Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, Belfast, United Kingdom
The Patrick G Johnston Centre for Cancer Research, Queen’s University Belfast, United Kingdom
Precision Medicine Centre of Excellence, Health Sciences Building, The Patrick G Johnston Centre for Cancer Research, Queen's University Belfast, United Kingdom
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Queen's University Belfast · Belfast Health and Social Care Trust
Affiliation as printed
Centre for Public Health, Queen’s University Belfast, United Kingdom
Department of Cellular Pathology, Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, Belfast, United Kingdom
The Patrick G Johnston Centre for Cancer Research, Queen’s University Belfast, United Kingdom
Centre for Public Health, Queen's University Belfast, United Kingdom
The Patrick G Johnston Centre for Cancer Research, Queen's University Belfast, United Kingdom
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University of Leeds · Maastricht University Medical Centre · Maastricht University
Affiliation as printed
Pathology & Data Analytics, Leeds Institute of Medical Research at St James’s, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom
Pathology and GROW School for Oncology and Developmental Biology, Maastricht University Medical Center+, Maastricht, The Netherlands
Pathology & Data Analytics, Leeds Institute of Medical Research at St James's, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom
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Queen's University Belfast · Belfast Health and Social Care Trust
Affiliation as printed
Precision Medicine Centre of Excellence, Health Sciences Building, The Patrick G Johnston Centre for Cancer Research, Queen’s University Belfast, United Kingdom
Regional Molecular Diagnostic Service, Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, Belfast, United Kingdom
The Patrick G Johnston Centre for Cancer Research, Queen’s University Belfast, United Kingdom
Precision Medicine Centre of Excellence, Health Sciences Building, The Patrick G Johnston Centre for Cancer Research, Queen's University Belfast, United Kingdom
The Patrick G Johnston Centre for Cancer Research, Queen's University Belfast, United Kingdom
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Affiliation as printed
Division of Clinical Epidemiology and Aging Research, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany
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Universitätsklinikum Aachen · RWTH Aachen University
Affiliation as printed
Department of Medicine III, University Hospital RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany
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Universitätsklinikum Aachen · RWTH Aachen University
Affiliation as printed
Department of Medicine III, University Hospital RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany
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Universitätsklinikum Aachen · RWTH Aachen University
Affiliation as printed
Department of Medicine III, University Hospital RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany
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Affiliation as printed
Clinical Trial Service Unit, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
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Affiliation as printed
Pathology & Data Analytics, Leeds Institute of Medical Research at St James’s, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom
Pathology & Data Analytics, Leeds Institute of Medical Research at St James's, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom
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German Cancer Research Center · National Center for Tumor Diseases · Deutsches Konsortium für Translationale Krebsforschung
Affiliation as printed
Division of Clinical Epidemiology and Aging Research, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany
Division of Preventive Oncology, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT), Heidelberg, Germany
German Cancer Consortium (DKTK), German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany
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Affiliation as printed
Division of Clinical Epidemiology and Aging Research, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany
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German Cancer Research Center · National Center for Tumor Diseases
Affiliation as printed
Digital Biomarkers for Oncology Group (DBO), National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT), German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany
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Universität Hamburg · German Cancer Research Center · University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf · University Cancer Center Hamburg
Affiliation as printed
Cancer Epidemiology Group, University Cancer Center Hamburg, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
Division of Cancer Epidemiology, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany
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Universitätsklinikum Aachen · RWTH Aachen University
Affiliation as printed
Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, University Hospital RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany
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Universitätsklinikum Aachen · RWTH Aachen University
Affiliation as printed
Institute for Computational Biomedicine, JRC for Computational Biomedicine, RWTH Aachen University, University Hospital Aachen, Aachen, Germany
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Düsseldorf University Hospital · Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf
Affiliation as printed
Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Infectious Diseases, Medical Faculty of Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, University Hospital Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany
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University Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
Affiliation as printed
Institute of Pathology, University Medical Center Mainz, Mainz, Germany
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Universitätsklinikum Aachen · RWTH Aachen University
Affiliation as printed
Department of Medicine III, University Hospital RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany
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Universitätsklinikum Aachen · RWTH Aachen University
Affiliation as printed
Department of Medicine III, University Hospital RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany
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Affiliation as printed
Division of Clinical Epidemiology and Aging Research, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany
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Universitätsklinikum Aachen · RWTH Aachen University
Affiliation as printed
Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, University Hospital RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany
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University of Leeds · German Cancer Research Center · University Hospital Heidelberg · National Center for Tumor Diseases · Universitätsklinikum Aachen · Deutsches Konsortium für Translationale Krebsforschung · RWTH Aachen University
Affiliation as printed
Department of Medicine III, University Hospital RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany
German Cancer Consortium (DKTK), German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany
Medical Oncology, National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT), University Hospital Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
Pathology & Data Analytics, Leeds Institute of Medical Research at St James’s, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom
Pathology & Data Analytics, Leeds Institute of Medical Research at St James's, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom
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