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INTERACT-CMIL: Multi-Task Shared Learning and Inter-Task Consistency for Conjunctival Melanocytic Intraepithelial Lesion Grading

Mert Ikinci, Luna Toma, Karin U Loeffler, Leticia Ussem, Daniela Süsskind, Julia M Weller, Yousef Yeganeh, Martina Herwig-Carl, Shadi Albarqouni

2026 IEEE 23rd International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI), 2026

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Abstract

Accurate grading of Conjunctival Melanocytic Intraepithelial Lesions (CMIL) is essential for treatment and melanoma prediction but remains difficult due to subtle morphological cues and interrelated diagnostic criteria. We introduce INTERACT-CMIL, a multi-head deep learning framework that jointly predicts five histopathological axes; WHO4, WHO5, horizontal spread, vertical spread, and cytologic atypia, through Shared Feature Learning with Combinatorial Partial Supervision and an Inter-Dependence Loss enforcing crosstask consistency. Trained and evaluated on a newly curated, multicenter dataset of 486 expert-annotated conjunctival biopsy patches from three university hospitals, INTERACT-CMIL achieves consistent improvements over CNN and foundation-model (FM) baselines, with relative macro $\mathrm{F}_{1}$ gains up to $55.1 \%(\text{WHO} 4)$ and 25.0% (vertical spread). The framework provides coherent, interpretable multicriteria predictions aligned with expert grading, offering a reproducible computational benchmark for CMIL diagnosis and a step toward standardized digital ocular pathology.

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Cite (BibTeX)
@inproceedings{ikinci2026interact,
 author = {Ikinci, Mert and Toma, Luna and Loeffler, Karin U and Ussem, Leticia and Süsskind, Daniela and Weller, Julia M and Yeganeh, Yousef and Herwig-Carl, Martina C and Albarqouni, Shadi},
 booktitle = {2026 IEEE 23rd International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI)},
 organization = {IEEE},
 pages = {1--5},
 title = {INTERACT-CMIL: Multi-Task Shared Learning and Inter-Task Consistency for Conjunctival Melanocytic Intraepithelial Lesion Grading},
 year = {2026}
}