Swarm learning for decentralized artificial intelligence in cancer histopathology
Nature Medicine, vol. 28, pp. 1232–1239
Abstract
Artificial intelligence (AI) can predict the presence of molecular alterations directly from routine histopathology slides. However, training robust AI systems requires large datasets for which data collection faces practical, ethical and legal obstacles. These obstacles could be overcome with swarm learning (SL), in which partners jointly train AI models while avoiding data transfer and monopolistic data governance. Here, we demonstrate the successful use of SL in large, multicentric datasets of gigapixel histopathology images from over 5,000 patients. We show that AI models trained using SL can predict BRAF mutational status and microsatellite instability directly from hematoxylin and eosin (H&E)-stained pathology slides of colorectal cancer. We trained AI models on three patient cohorts from Northern Ireland, Germany and the United States, and validated the prediction performance in two independent datasets from the United Kingdom. Our data show that SL-trained AI models outperform most locally trained models, and perform on par with models that are trained on the merged datasets. In addition, we show that SL-based AI models are data efficient. In the future, SL can be used to train distributed AI models for any histopathology image analysis task, eliminating the need for data transfer.
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, UK
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Affiliation as printed
Pathology & Data Analytics, Leeds Institute of Medical Research at St James's, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
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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, Belfast, UK
Regional Molecular Diagnostic Service, Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, Belfast, UK
The Patrick G Johnston Centre for Cancer Research, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, UK
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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, Belfast, UK
Department of Cellular Pathology, Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, Belfast, UK
The Patrick G Johnston Centre for Cancer Research, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, UK
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University of Leeds · Maastricht University Medical Centre · Maastricht University
Affiliation as printed
Department of Pathology and GROW School for Oncology and Reproduction, Maastricht University Medical Center+, Maastricht, the Netherlands
Pathology & Data Analytics, Leeds Institute of Medical Research at St James's, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
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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, Belfast, UK
Regional Molecular Diagnostic Service, Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, Belfast, UK
The Patrick G Johnston Centre for Cancer Research, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, UK
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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, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
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Affiliation as printed
Pathology & Data Analytics, Leeds Institute of Medical Research at St James's, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
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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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Universitätsklinikum Aachen · RWTH Aachen University
Affiliation as printed
Department of Medicine III, University Hospital RWTH Aachen, Aachen, 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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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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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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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 · Heidelberg University · University Hospital Heidelberg · National Center for Tumor Diseases · Universitätsklinikum Aachen · RWTH Aachen University
Affiliation as printed
Department of Medicine III, University Hospital RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany. jakob-nikolas.kather@alumni.dkfz.de
Medical Oncology, National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT), University Hospital Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany. jakob-nikolas.kather@alumni.dkfz.de
Pathology & Data Analytics, Leeds Institute of Medical Research at St James's, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK. jakob-nikolas.kather@alumni.dkfz.de
Medical Oncology, National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT), University Hospital Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
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