Prompt learning has emerged as a promising paradigm for adapting pre-trained vision-language models (VLMs) to few-shot whole slide image (WSI) classification by aligning visual features with textual representations, thereby reducing annotation cost and enhancing model generalization. Nevertheless, existing methods typically rely on slide-level prompts and fail to capture the subtype-specific phenotypic variations of histological entities (e.g., nuclei, glands) that are critical for cancer diagnosis. To address this gap, we propose Multi-scale Attribute-enhanced Prompt Learning (MAPLE), a hierarchical framework for few-shot WSI classification that jointly integrates multi-scale visual semantics and performs prediction at both the entity and slide levels. Specifically, we first leverage large language models (LLMs) to generate entity-level prompts that can help identify multi-scale histological entities and their phenotypic attributes, as well as slide-level prompts to capture global visual descriptions. Then, an entity-guided cross-attention module is proposed to generate entity-level features, followed by aligning with their corresponding subtype-specific attributes for fine-grained entity-level prediction. To enrich entity representations, we further develop a cross-scale entity graph learning module that can update these representations by capturing their semantic correlations within and across scales. The refined representations are then aggregated into a slide-level representation and aligned with the corresponding prompts for slide-level prediction. Finally, we combine both entity-level and slide-level outputs to produce the final prediction results. Results on three cancer cohorts confirm the effectiveness of our approach in addressing few-shot pathology diagnosis tasks.

Despite Contrastive Language-Image Pre-training (CLIP)'s remarkable capability to retrieve content across modalities, a substantial modality gap persists in its feature space. Intriguingly, we discover that off-the-shelf MLLMs (Multimodal Large Language Models) demonstrate powerful inherent modality alignment properties. While recent MLLM-based retrievers with unified architectures partially mitigate this gap, their reliance on coarse modality alignment mechanisms fundamentally limits their potential. In this work, We introduce MAPLE (Modality-Aligned Preference Learning for Embeddings), a novel framework that leverages the finegrained alignment priors inherent in MLLM to guide cross-modal representation learning. MAPLE formulates the learning process as reinforcement learning with two key components: (1) Automatic preference data construction using off-theshelf MLLM, and (2) a new Relative Preference Alignment (RPA) loss, which adapts Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) to the embedding learning setting. Experimental results show that our preference-guided alignment achieves substantial gains in fine-grained cross-modal retrieval, underscoring its effectiveness in handling nuanced semantic distinctions.

Prompt learning has emerged as a promising paradigm for adapting pre-trained vision-language models (VLMs) to few-shot whole slide image (WSI) classification by aligning visual features with textual representations, thereby reducing annotation cost and enhancing model generalization. Nevertheless, existing methods typically rely on slide-level prompts and fail to capture the subtype-specific phenotypic variations of histological entities (e.g., nuclei, glands) that are critical for cancer diagnosis. To address this gap, we propose Multi-scale Attribute-enhanced Prompt Learning (MAPLE), a hierarchical framework for few-shot WSI classification that jointly integrates multi-scale visual semantics and performs prediction at both the entity and slide levels. Specifically, we first leverage large language models (LLMs) to generate entity-level prompts that can help identify multi-scale histological entities and their phenotypic attributes, as well as slide-level prompts to capture global visual descriptions. Then, an entity-guided cross-attention module is proposed to generate entity-level features, followed by aligning with their corresponding subtype-specific attributes for fine-grained entity-level prediction. To enrich entity representations, we further develop a cross-scale entity graph learning module that can update these representations by capturing their semantic correlations within and across scales. The refined representations are then aggregated into a slide-level representation and aligned with the corresponding prompts for slide-level prediction. Finally, we combine both entity-level and slide-level outputs to produce the final prediction results. Results on three cancer cohorts confirm the effectiveness of our approach in addressing few-shot pathology diagnosis tasks.

Model interpretability is an increasingly important component of practical machine learning. Some of the most common forms of interpretability systems are example-based, local, and global explanations. One of the main challenges in interpretability is designing explanation systems that can capture aspects of each of these explanation types, in order to develop a more thorough understanding of the model. We address this challenge in a novel model called MAPLE that uses local linear modeling techniques along with a dual interpretation of random forests (both as a supervised neighborhood approach and as a feature selection method). MAPLE has two fundamental advantages over existing interpretability systems. First, while it is effective as a black-box explanation system, MAPLE itself is a highly accurate predictive model that provides faithful self explanations, and thus sidesteps the typical accuracy-interpretability trade-off. Specifically, we demonstrate, on several UCI datasets, that MAPLE is at least as accurate as random forests and that it produces more faithful local explanations than LIME, a popular interpretability system. Second, MAPLE provides both example-based and local explanations and can detect global patterns, which allows it to diagnose limitations in its local explanations.

Model interpretability is an increasingly important component of practical machine learning. Some ofthemost common forms ofinterpretability systems are example-based, local, and global explanations. One of the main challenges in interpretability isdesigning explanation systems thatcancapture aspects ofeach of these explanation types, in order to develop a more thorough understanding of the model. We address this challenge in a novel model called MAPLE that useslocallinearmodeling techniques alongwithadualinterpretation ofrandom forests (both as a supervised neighborhood approach and as a feature selection method).

Large-scale egocentric video datasets capture diverse human activities across a wide range of scenarios, offering rich and detailed insights into how humans interact with objects, especially those that require fine-grained dexterous control. Such complex, dexterous skills with precise controls are crucial for many robotic manipulation tasks, yet are often insufficiently addressed by traditional data-driven approaches to robotic manipulation. To address this gap, we leverage manipulation priors learned from large-scale egocentric video datasets to improve policy learning for dexterous robotic manipulation tasks. We present MAPLE, a novel method for dexterous robotic manipulation that learns features to predict object contact points and detailed hand poses at the moment of contact from egocentric images. We then use the learned features to train policies for downstream manipulation tasks. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of MAPLE across 4 existing simulation benchmarks, as well as a newly designed set of 4 challenging simulation tasks requiring fine-grained object control and complex dexterous skills. The benefits of MAPLE are further highlighted in real-world experiments using a 17 DoF dexterous robotic hand, whereas the simultaneous evaluation across both simulation and real-world experiments has remained underexplored in prior work. We additionally showcase the efficacy of our model on an egocentric contact point prediction task, validating its usefulness beyond dexterous manipulation policy learning.

Model interpretability is an increasingly important component of practical machine learning. Some of the most common forms of interpretability systems are example-based, local, and global explanations. One of the main challenges in interpretability is designing explanation systems that can capture aspects of each of these explanation types, in order to develop a more thorough understanding of the model. We address this challenge in a novel model called MAPLE that uses local linear modeling techniques along with a dual interpretation of random forests (both as a supervised neighborhood approach and as a feature selection method). MAPLE has two fundamental advantages over existing interpretability systems. First, while it is effective as a black-box explanation system, MAPLE itself is a highly accurate predictive model that provides faithful self explanations, and thus sidesteps the typical accuracy-interpretability trade-off. Specifically, we demonstrate, on several UCI datasets, that MAPLE is at least as accurate as random forests and that it produces more faithful local explanations than LIME, a popular interpretability system. Second, MAPLE provides both example-based and local explanations and can detect global patterns, which allows it to diagnose limitations in its local explanations.