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😊 Citation
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@misc{zhang2025generativemodelscomputationalpathology,
title={Content Generation Models in Computational Pathology: A Comprehensive Survey on Methods, Applications, and Challenges},
author={Yuan Zhang and Xinfeng Zhang and Xiaoming Qi and Xinyu Wu and Feng Chen and Guanyu Yang and Huazhu Fu},
year={2025},
eprint={2505.10993},
archivePrefix={arXiv},
primaryClass={eess.IV},
url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.10993},
}
Note: The volume, number, pages, and DOI will be updated upon final publication.
📌 Our Contribution
We explore content generation modeling in the field of computational pathology — using generative models to create images, text, and molecular data that can help improve diagnostic tasks.
Our work organizes recent progress into four key areas:
🖼️ Image Generation – from tissue patches to whole-slide images
📝 Text Generation – clinical report synthesis and captioning
🧬 Molecular Profile ↔ Morphology – cross-modality generation
💎 Other Generation – tailored applications for pathology research
By reviewing 150+ representative studies, we trace the development of generation models — from GANs to diffusion models and vision–language models — and summarize available datasets, evaluation methods, and current challenges.
🎯 Goal: Provide researchers & practitioners with a reference roadmap for building more integrated, clinically applicable generation systems in computational pathology.
💡 The Landscape at a Glance
Evolution of Generative Models (2017-2025)
A timeline illustrating the major milestones and developmental trajectory of generative models in pathology.
📖 Structure & Taxonomy Overview
This repository provides a comprehensive and continuously updated list of over 150 papers discussed in our survey. The structure below follows the taxonomy proposed in our paper.
📚 Generative Pathology Paper List
🖼️ Image Generation
Models and methods focused on the synthesis and manipulation of histopathology images.
Synthetic Image & Augmentation
- Selective synthetic augmentation with HistoGAN for improved histopathology image classification, MIA, 2020 [Paper]
- PathologyGAN: Learning deep representations of cancer tissue, MIDL, 2020 [Paper]
- Self-supervised representation learning using visual field expansion on digital pathology, ICCV, 2021 [Paper] [Code]
- InsMix: Towards Realistic Generative Data Augmentation for Nuclei Instance Segmentation, MICCAI, 2022 [Paper] [Code]
- Multi-scale self-attention generative adversarial network for pathology image restoration, The Visual Computer, 2022 [Paper]
- Tackling stain variability using CycleGAN-based stain augmentation, Journal of Pathology Informatics, 2022 [Paper]
- ProGleason-GAN: Conditional progressive growing GAN for prostatic cancer Gleason grade patch synthesis, CMPB, 2023 [Paper] [Code]
- Diffusion-Based Data Augmentation for Nuclei Image Segmentation, MICCAI, 2023 [Paper] [Code]
- DiffMix: Diffusion Model-Based Data Synthesis for Nuclei Segmentation and Classification in Imbalanced Pathology Image Datasets, MICCAI, 2023 [Paper] [Code]
- Enhancing gland segmentation in colon histology images using an instance-aware diffusion model, CBM, 2023 [Paper]
- A Morphology Focused Diffusion Probabilistic Model for Synthesis of Histopathology Images, WACV, 2023 [Paper]
- Unified Framework for Histopathology Image Augmentation and Classification via Generative Models, DICTA, 2024 [Paper]
- ViT-DAE: Transformer-Driven Diffusion Autoencoder for Histopathology Image Analysis, MICCAI Workshop, 2024 [Paper]
- USegMix: Unsupervised Segment Mix for Efficient Data Augmentation in Pathology Images, DEMI, 2024 [Paper]
- Learned representation-guided diffusion models for large-image generation, CVPR, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- Generating progressive images from pathological transitions via diffusion model, MICCAI, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- Characterizing the Features of Mitotic Figures Using a Conditional Diffusion Probabilistic Model, MICCAI Workshop, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- Optimising diffusion models for histopathology image synthesis, BMVC, 2024 [Paper]
- Counterfactual Diffusion Models for Mechanistic Explainability of Artificial Intelligence Models in Pathology, bioRxiv, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- Diffusion models for out-of-distribution detection in digital pathology, MIA, 2024 [Paper]
- Deep Learning for Automated Detection of Breast Cancer in Deep Ultraviolet Fluorescence Images with Diffusion Probabilistic Model, ISBI, 2024 [Paper]
- Generative models improve fairness of medical classifiers under distribution shifts, Nature Medicine, 2024 [Paper]
- Generating and evaluating synthetic data in digital pathology through diffusion models, Scientific Reports, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- Mitigating bias in prostate cancer diagnosis using synthetic data for improved AI driven Gleason grading, npj Precision Oncology, 2025 [Paper]
- Prototype-Guided Diffusion for Digital Pathology: Achieving Foundation Model Performance with Minimal Clinical Data, CVPR, 2025 [Paper]
- PDSeg: Patch-Wise Distillation and Controllable Image Generation for Weakly-Supervised Histopathology Tissue Segmentation, ICASSP, 2025 [Paper] [Code]
Mask-Guided Generation
- A multi-attribute controllable generative model for histopathology image synthesis, MICCAI, 2021 [Paper] [Code]
- Sharp-gan: Sharpness loss regularized gan for histopathology image synthesis, ISBI, 2022 [Paper]
- Realistic data enrichment for robust image segmentation in histopathology, MICCAI Workshop, 2023 [Paper]
- NASDM: Nuclei-Aware Semantic Histopathology Image Generation Using Diffusion Models, MICCAI, 2023 [Paper] [Code]
- DiffInfinite: Large Mask-Image Synthesis via Parallel Random Patch Diffusion in Histopathology, NeurIPS, 2023 [Paper] [Code]
- DISC: Latent Diffusion Models with Self-Distillation from Separated Conditions for Prostate Cancer Grading, ISBI, 2024 [Paper]
- Style-Extracting Diffusion Models for Semi-supervised Histopathology Segmentation, ECCV, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- Co-synthesis of Histopathology Nuclei Image-Label Pairs using a Context-Conditioned Joint Diffusion Model, ECCV, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- SynCLay: Interactive synthesis of histology images from bespoke cellular layouts, MIA, 2024 [Paper]
- HADiff: hierarchy aggregated diffusion model for pathology image segmentation, The Visual Computer, 2025 [Paper]
- Mask-guided cross-image attention for zero-shot in-silico histopathologic image generation with a diffusion model, arXiv, 2025 [Paper]
- PathoPainter: Augmenting Histopathology Segmentation via Tumor-aware Inpainting, MICCAI, 2025 [Paper] [Code]
- A robust image segmentation and synthesis pipeline for histopathology, MIA, 2025 [Paper] [Code]
- Pathdiff: Histopathology image synthesis with Text and Mask conditions that are not paired, ICCV, 2025[Paper][Code]
Artifact Restoration
- A review of artifacts in histopathology, J Oral Maxillofac Pathol., 2018 [Paper]
- Restoration of Marker Occluded Hematoxylin and Eosin Stained Whole Slide Histology Images Using Generative Adversarial Networks, ISBI, 2020 [Paper]
- Multi-scale self-attention generative adversarial network for pathology image restoration, The Visual Computer, 2022 [Paper]
- Artifact Detection and Restoration in Histology Images With Stain-Style and Structural Preservation, TMI, 2023 [Paper] [Code]
- Artifact Restoration in Histology Images with Diffusion Probabilistic Models, MICCAI, 2023 [Paper] [Code]
- Enhanced Pathology Image Quality with Restore–Generative Adversarial Network, The American Journal of Pathology, 2023 [Paper]
- A Federated Learning System for Histopathology Image Analysis With an Orchestral Stain-Normalization GAN, TMI, 2023 [Paper]
- Histology Image Artifact Restoration with Lightweight Transformer Based Diffusion Model, AIME, 2024 [Paper]
- LatentArtiFusion: An Effective and Efficient Histological Artifacts Restoration Framework, MICCAI Workshop, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- HARP: Unsupervised histopathology artifact restoration, MIDL, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- ArtiDiffuser: A unified framework for artifact restoration and synthesis for histology images via counterfactual diffusion model, MIA, 2025 [Paper] [Code]
High/Multi-Resolution Generation
- Synthesis of diagnostic quality cancer pathology images by generative adversarial networks, The Journal of Pathology, 2020 [Paper] [Code]
- Self-supervised representation learning using visual field expansion on digital pathology, ICCV, 2021 [Paper] [Code]
- Seamless Virtual Whole Slide Image Synthesis and Validation Using Perceptual Embedding Consistency, JBHI, 2021 [Paper]
- SAFRON: stitching across the frontier network for generating colorectal cancer histology images, MIA, 2022 [Paper] [Code]
- Diffusion-based generation of Histopathological Whole Slide Images at a Gigapixel scale, WACV, 2024 [Paper]
- URCDM: Ultra-Resolution Image Synthesis in Histopathology, MICCAI, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- Histo-Diffusion: A Diffusion Super-Resolution Method for Digital Pathology with Comprehensive Quality Assessment, arXiv, 2024 [Paper]
- PathUp: Patch-wise Timestep Tracking for Multi-class Large Pathology Image Synthesising Diffusion Model, MM '24, 2024 [Paper]
- STAR-RL: Spatial-Temporal Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning for Interpretable Pathology Image Super-Resolution, TMI, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- Comparative Analysis of Diffusion Generative Models in Computational Pathology, arXiv, 2024 [Paper]
- ToPoFM: Topology-Guided Pathology Foundation Model for High-Resolution Pathology Image Synthesis with Cellular-Level Control, TMI, 2025 [Paper]
Text-to-Image Generation
- PathLDM: Text conditioned Latent Diffusion Model for Histopathology, WACV, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- VIMs: Virtual Immunohistochemistry Multiplex Staining via Text-to-Stain Diffusion Trained on Uniplex Stains, MLMI, 2024 [Paper]
- Pathdiff: Histopathology image synthesis with Text and Mask conditions that are not paired, ICCV, 2025[Paper][Code]
Stain Synthesis (Normalization & Transfer)
- Neural Stain-Style Transfer Learning using GAN for Histopathological Images, arXiv, 2017 [Paper] [Code]
- Stain normalization of histopathology images using generative adversarial networks, ISBI, 2018 [Paper]
- Normalization of HE-stained histological images using cycle consistent generative adversarial networks, Diagnostic Pathology, 2021 [Paper]
- Residual cyclegan for robust domain transformation of histopathological tissue slides, MIA, 2021 [Paper] [Code]
- Unpaired Stain Transfer Using Pathology-Consistent Constrained Generative Adversarial Networks, TMI, 2021 [Paper] [Code]
- Seamless Virtual Whole Slide Image Synthesis and Validation Using Perceptual Embedding Consistency, JBHI, 2021 [Paper]
- Colour adaptive generative networks for stain normalisation of histopathology images, MIA, 2022 [Paper] [Code]
- A Federated Learning System for Histopathology Image Analysis With an Orchestral Stain-Normalization GAN, TMI, 2023 [Paper]
- Stain normalization using score-based diffusion model through stain separation and overlapped moving window patch strategies, CBM, 2023 [Paper]
- StainDiff: Transfer Stain Styles of Histology Images with Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models and Self-ensemble, MICCAI, 2023 [Paper]
- Generative adversarial networks for stain normalisation in histopathology, Applications of Generative AI, 2024 [Paper]
- StainFuser: Controlling Diffusion for Faster Neural Style Transfer in Multi-Gigapixel Histology Images, arXiv, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- Test-Time Stain Adaptation with Diffusion Models for Histopathology Image Classification, ECCV, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- Unsupervised Latent Stain Adaptation for Computational Pathology, MICCAI, 2024 [Paper]
- Accelerating histopathology workflows with generative AI-based virtually multiplexed tumour profiling, Nature Machine Intelligence, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- Virtual multi-staining in a single-section view for renal pathology using generative adversarial networks, CBM, 2024 [Paper]
- AV-GAN: Attention-Based Varifocal Generative Adversarial Network for Uneven Medical Image Translation, IJCNN, 2024 [Paper]
- Diffusion Models for Generative Histopathology, MICCAI Workshop, 2024 [Paper]
- PST-Diff: Achieving High-Consistency Stain Transfer by Diffusion Models With Pathological and Structural Constraints, TMI, 2024 [Paper]
- StainDiffuser: MultiTask Dual Diffusion Model for Virtual Staining, arXiv, 2024 [Paper]
- Multi-modal Denoising Diffusion Pre-training for Whole-Slide Image Classification, MM '24, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- Deeply supervised two stage generative adversarial network for stain normalization, Scientific Reports, 2025 [Paper]
- ODA-GAN: Orthogonal Decoupling Alignment GAN Assisted by Weakly-supervised Learning for Virtual Immunohistochemistry Staining, CVPR, 2025 [Paper] [Code]
- A Value Mapping Virtual Staining Framework for Large-scale Histological Imaging, arXiv, 2025 [Paper]
- Diffusion-based Virtual Staining from Polarimetric Mueller Matrix Imaging, MICCAI, 2025 [Paper]
- F2FLDM: Latent Diffusion Models with Histopathology Pre-Trained Embeddings for Unpaired Frozen Section to FFPE Translation, WACV, 2025 [Paper] [Code]
- Unpaired Multi-Domain Histopathology Virtual Staining Using Dual Path Prompted Inversion, AAAI, 2025 [Paper] [Code]
- Versatile Stain Transfer in Histopathology Using a Unified Diffusion Framework, ISBI, 2025 [Paper]
📝 Text Generation
This category covers models that generate text from pathology images, such as captions or reports.
Image Captioning
- Multiple Instance Captioning: Learning Representations from Histopathology Textbooks and Articles, CVPR, 2021 [Paper] [Code]
- Inference of captions from histopathological patches, MIDL, 2022 [Paper] [Code]
- Enhanced descriptive captioning model for histopathological patches, Multimedia Tools and Applications, 2023 [Paper]
- What a Whole Slide Image Can Tell? Subtype-guided Masked Transformer for Pathological Image Captioning, arXiv, 2023 [Paper]
- PathM3: A Multimodal Multi-task Multiple Instance Learning Framework for Whole Slide Image Classification and Captioning, MICCAI, 2024 [Paper]
- HistGen: Histopathology Report Generation via Local-Global Feature Encoding and Cross-Modal Context Interaction, MICCAI, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- In-context learning enables multimodal large language models to classify cancer pathology images, Nature Communications, 2024 [Paper]
Visual Question Answering (VQA)
- PathVQA: 30000+ Questions for Medical Visual Question Answering, arXiv preprint, 2020 [Paper] [Code]
- Vision-Language Transformer for Interpretable Pathology Visual Question Answering, JBHI, 2023 [Paper]
- WSI-VQA: Interpreting Whole Slide Images by Generative Visual Question Answering, ECCV, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- A multimodal generative AI copilot for human pathology, Nature, 2024 [Paper]
- Quilt-LLaVA: Visual Instruction Tuning by Extracting Localized Narratives from Open-Source Histopathology Videos, CVPR, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- A vision–language foundation model for precision oncology, Nature, 2025 [Paper]
- PathGen-1.6M: 1.6 Million Pathology Image-text Pairs Generation through Multi-agent Collaboration, ICLR, 2025 [Paper] [Code]
- Pathologyvlm: a large vision-language model for pathology image understanding, Artificial Intelligence Review, 2025 [Paper]
- SlideChat: A Large Vision-Language Assistant for Whole-Slide Pathology Image Understanding, CVPR, 2025 [Paper] [Code]
- PathCoT: Chain-of-Thought Prompting for Zero-shot Pathology Visual Reasoning, arxiv, 2025 [Paper]
- Cost-effective instruction learning for pathology vision and language analysis, Nature Computational Science, 2025 [Paper] [Code]
- Efficient Whole Slide Pathology VQA via Token Compression, arxiv, 2025 [Paper]
Report Generation
- PRISM: A Multi-Modal Generative Foundation Model for Slide-Level Histopathology, arXiv, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- Automatic Report Generation for Histopathology images using pre-trained Vision Transformers and BERT, ISBI, 2024 [Paper]
- Generating dermatopathology reports from gigapixel whole slide images with HistoGPT, Nature Communications, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- A Multimodal Knowledge-enhanced Whole-slide Pathology Foundation Model, arXiv, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- WsiCaption: Multiple Instance Generation of Pathology Reports for Gigapixel Whole-Slide Images, MICCAI, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- PathAlign: A vision-language model for whole slide images in histopathology, MICCAI, 2024 [Paper]
- PathInsight: Instruction Tuning of Multimodal Datasets and Models for Intelligence Assisted Diagnosis in Histopathology, arXiv, 2024 [Paper]
- Pathology report generation from whole slide images with knowledge retrieval and multi-level regional feature selection, CMPB, 2025 [Paper]
- Pathfinder: A multi-modal multi-agent system for medical diagnostic decision-making applied to histopathology, arXiv, 2025 [Paper]
- Pathology Report Generation and Multimodal Representation Learning for Cutaneous Melanocytic Lesions, arXiv, 2025 [Paper]
- PolyPath: Adapting a Large Multimodal Model for Multi-slide Pathology Report Generation, arXiv, 2025 [Paper]
Report Abstraction
- Using Generative AI to Extract Structured Information from Free Text Pathology Reports, Journal of Medical Systems, 2025 [Paper]
- Leveraging large language models for structured information extraction from pathology reports, arXiv, 2025 [Paper]
- Cancer Type, Stage and Prognosis Assessment from Pathology Reports using LLMs, Scientific Reports, 2025 [Paper] [Code]
- Enhancing doctor-patient communication using large language models for pathology report interpretation, BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, 2025 [Paper]
🧬 Molecular Profiles-Morphology Generation
Models that bridge the gap between histology (phenotype) and genomics (genotype).
Virtual Molecular Profiling
-
Integrating spatial and single-cell transcriptomics data using deep generative models with SpatialScope, Nature Communications, 2023 [Paper] [Code]
-
Cross-modal diffusion modelling for super-resolved spatial transcriptomics, MICCAI, 2024 [Paper]
-
PAST: A multimodal single-cell foundation model for histopathology and spatial transcriptomics in cancer, arxiv, 2025 [Paper]
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Inference of single cell profiles from histology stains with the Single-Cell omics from Histology Analysis Framework (SCHAF), bioRxiv, 2025 [Paper]
-
GenST: A Generative Cross-Modal Model for Predicting Spatial Transcriptomics from Histology Images, MICCAI workshop, 2025 [Paper]
-
Diffusion Generative Modeling for Spatially Resolved Gene Expression Inference from Histology Images, ICLR, 2025 [Paper] [Code]
-
Histopathology-based protein multiplex generation using deep learning, Nature Machine Intelligence, 2025 [Paper] [Code]
-
Robust Multimodal Survival Prediction with Conditional Latent Differentiation Variational AutoEncoder, CVPR, 2025 [Paper] [Code]
-
TCGA virtual spatial transcriptomics atlas: multimodal virtual ST (H&E + expression + coords + genes) from DeepSpot-M; 28,664 slides / 32 cancers / 295.3M spots, medRxiv, 2026 [Paper] [Dataset] [Code]
-
HEST Xenium virtual spatial transcriptomics: multimodal virtual single-cell ST (H&E + expression + coords + genes) from DeepSpot-M; 59 HEST-1k Xenium samples / ~13.3M cells / 22 tissue types, medRxiv, 2026 [Paper] [Dataset] [Code]
-
DeepSpot: Leveraging Spatial Context for Enhanced Spatial Transcriptomics Prediction from H&E Images, medRxiv, 2025 [Paper] [Code]
-
DeepSpot2Cell: Predicting Virtual Single-Cell Spatial Transcriptomics from H&E images using Spot-Level Supervision, NeurIPS, 2025 [Paper] [Code]
-
DeepSpot-M: a multimodal foundation model for transcriptome-wide virtual spatial transcriptomics from histology, medRxiv, 2026 [Paper] [Code]
Reverse Morphology Generation
- Pix2Path: Integrating Spatial Transcriptomics and Digital Pathology with Deep Learning to Score Pathological Risk and Link Gene Expression to Disease Mechanisms, bioRxiv, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- Generation of synthetic whole-slide image tiles of tumours from RNA-sequencing data via cascaded diffusion models, Nature Biomedical Engineering, 2024 [Paper]
- Generative adversarial networks accurately reconstruct pan-cancer histology from pathologic, genomic, and radiographic latent features, Science Advances, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- PAST: A multimodal single-cell foundation model for histopathology and spatial transcriptomics in cancer, arxiv, 2025 [Paper]
- SPATIA: Multimodal Model for Prediction and Generation of Spatial Cell Phenotypes, arxiv, 2025 [Paper]
💎 Other Generations
Emerging and specialized generative tasks beyond traditional image and text synthesis.
Spatial Layout Generation
- Spatial Diffusion for Cell Layout Generation, MICCAI, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- Tertiary Lymphoid Structures Generation Through Graph-Based Diffusion, MICCAI, 2024 [Paper]
- TopoCellGen: Generating Histopathology Cell Topology with a Diffusion Model, CVPR, 2025 [Paper] [Code]
- DAMM-Diffusion: Learning Divergence-Aware Multi-Modal Diffusion Model for Nanoparticles Distribution Prediction, CVPR, 2025 [Paper] [Code]
Semantic Output Generation
- A visual–language foundation model for pathology image analysis using medical Twitter, Nature Medicine, 2023 [Paper] [Code]
- Prompting vision foundation models for pathology image analysis, CVPR, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- Towards a Text-Based Quantitative and Explainable Histopathology Image Analysis, MICCAI, 2024 [Paper]
- MLLM4PUE: Toward Universal Embeddings in Digital Pathology through Multimodal LLMs, arXiv, 2025 [Paper]
Latent Representation Generation
- AugDiff: Diffusion-Based Feature Augmentation for Multiple Instance Learning in Whole Slide Image, TAI, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- A whole-slide foundation model for digital pathology from real-world data, Nature, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- DCDiff: Dual-Granularity Cooperative Diffusion Models for Pathology Image Analysis, TMI, 2024 [Paper]
- Towards A Generalizable Pathology Foundation Model via Unified Knowledge Distillation, arxiv, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- Promptable Representation Distribution Learning and Data Augmentation for Gigapixel Histopathology WSI Analysis, AAAI, 2025 [Paper] [Code]
- MGPATH: Vision-Language Model with Multi-Granular Prompt Learning for Few-Shot WSI Classification, arxiv, 2025 [Paper] [Code]
Cell Simulation
- SynCellFactory: Generative Data Augmentation for Cell Tracking, MICCAI, 2024 [Paper] [Code]
- Improving 3D deep learning segmentation with biophysically motivated cell synthesis, Communications Biology, 2025 [Paper] [Code]
The field of Generative Pathology is evolving rapidly. This repository aims to be a living resource, and we welcome your help to keep it at the cutting edge.
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