Foundation models (FMs) have transformed computational pathology by providing powerful, general-purpose feature extractors. However, adapting and benchmarking individual FMs for specific diagnostic tasks is often time-consuming and resource-intensive, especially given their scale and diversity. To address this challenge, we introduce Group-Aggregative Selection Multi-Instance Learning (GAS-MIL), a flexible ensemble framework that seamlessly integrates features from multiple FMs, preserving their complementary strengths without requiring manual feature selection or extensive task-specific fine-tuning. Across classification tasks in three cancer datasets-prostate (PANDA), ovarian (UBC-OCEAN), and breast (TCGA-BrCa)-GAS-MIL consistently achieves superior or on-par performance relative to individual FMs and established MIL methods, demonstrating its robustness and generalizability. By enabling efficient integration of heterogeneous FMs, GAS-MIL streamlines model deployment for pathology and provides a scalable foundation for future multimodal and precision oncology applications.
@article{arxiv.2510.03555,
title = {GAS-MIL: Group-Aggregative Selection Multi-Instance Learning for Ensemble of Foundation Models in Digital Pathology Image Analysis},
author = {Peiran Quan and Zifan Gu and Zhuo Zhao and Qin Zhou and Donghan M. Yang and Ruichen Rong and Yang Xie and Guanghua Xiao},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.03555},
year = {2025}
}