PathoGen-X: A Cross-Modal Genomic Feature Trans-Align Network for Enhanced Survival Prediction from Histopathology Images

Abstract

Accurate survival prediction is essential for personalized cancer treatment. However, genomic data - often a more powerful predictor than pathology data - is costly and inaccessible. We present the cross-modal genomic feature translation and alignment network for enhanced survival prediction from histopathology images (PathoGen-X). It is a deep learning framework that leverages both genomic and imaging data during training, relying solely on imaging data at testing. PathoGen-X employs transformer-based networks to align and translate image features into the genomic feature space, enhancing weaker imaging signals with stronger genomic signals. Unlike other methods, PathoGen-X translates and aligns features without projecting them to a shared latent space and requires fewer paired samples. Evaluated on TCGA-BRCA, TCGA-LUAD, and TCGA-GBM datasets, PathoGen-X demonstrates strong survival prediction performance, emphasizing the potential of enriched imaging models for accessible cancer prognosis.