Attention-guided classification and tumor localization of combined hepatocellular-cholangiocarcinoma

Combined hepatocellular-cholangiocarcinomas (cHCC-CCA) are a type of cancer that share components of two other primary liver cancers: hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and cholangiocarcinoma (CCA). Accurate diagnosis of cHCC-CCA, of which the behavior may resemble that of either HCC or CCA, remains a challenge due to strong intratumoral heterogeneity. Since the prognoses differ between liver cancer types, it is necessary to improve their morphological characterization and recognition in order to accurately identify cHCC-CCA. In this work, we use whole slide images (WSIs) of the two main types of liver cancer (HCC and CCA) and cHCC-CCA, stained with Hematoxylin-Eosin-Safran (HES), to train a classification model that can distinguish between these subtypes and provides a potential solution for localizing different types of tumors in the combined liver cancer images.