Journal of Surgery Concepts & Practice >

2026 , Vol. 31 >Issue 03: 204 - 211

DOI: https://doi.org/10.16139/j.1007-9610.2026.03.05

Experts forum

Digital pathology and artificial intelligence-assisted diagnosis in breast cancer

  • RUAN Miao ,
  • FEI Xiaochun ,
  • DA Qian
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  • Department of Pathology, Ruijin Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200025, China

Received date: 2026-04-07

  Online published: 2026-08-11

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Abstract

Breast cancer is the most common malignancy among women worldwide. In recent years, with the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, foundation models in pathology have shown great potential in the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. This article provided a systematic overview of the current state and future directions of digital pathology and AI-assisted diagnosis for breast cancer from four dimensions: technical architecture, clinical applications, frontier explorations, and ethical challenges. We focused on the latest advances in pathology foundation models such as Virchow, UNI, and CONCH in downstream tasks including histological grading, HER2 scoring, and genotype prediction, discussed breakthroughs of multimodal generative AI systems like PathChat and SlideSeek in promoting interpretable diagnosis, and provided perspectives on emerging directions such as spatial transcriptomics integration and three-dimensional(3D) pathology reconstruction.

Key words： Breast cancer; Digital pathology; Artificial intelligence(AI); Foundation model; Pathological diagnosis

Cite this article

RUAN Miao , FEI Xiaochun , DA Qian . Digital pathology and artificial intelligence-assisted diagnosis in breast cancer[J]. Journal of Surgery Concepts & Practice, 2026 , 31(03) : 204 -211 . DOI: 10.16139/j.1007-9610.2026.03.05

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