A Clinical-grade Universal Foundation Model for Intraoperative Pathology

Zihan Zhao, Fengtao Zhou, Ronggang Li, Bing Chu, Xinke Zhang, Xueyi Zheng, Ke Zheng, Xiaobo Wen, Jiabo Ma, Yihui Wang, Jiewei Chen, Chengyou Zheng, Jiangyu Zhang, Yongqin Wen, Jiajia Meng, Ziqi Zeng, Xiaoqing Li, Jing Li, Dan Xie, Yaping Ye, Yu Wang, Hao Chen, Muyan Cai

Published: 2025/10/6

Abstract

Intraoperative pathology is pivotal to precision surgery, yet its clinical impact is constrained by diagnostic complexity and the limited availability of high-quality frozen-section data. While computational pathology has made significant strides, the lack of large-scale, prospective validation has impeded its routine adoption in surgical workflows. Here, we introduce CRISP, a clinical-grade foundation model developed on over 100,000 frozen sections from eight medical centers, specifically designed to provide Clinical-grade Robust Intraoperative Support for Pathology (CRISP). CRISP was comprehensively evaluated on more than 15,000 intraoperative slides across nearly 100 retrospective diagnostic tasks, including benign-malignant discrimination, key intraoperative decision-making, and pan-cancer detection, etc. The model demonstrated robust generalization across diverse institutions, tumor types, and anatomical sites-including previously unseen sites and rare cancers. In a prospective cohort of over 2,000 patients, CRISP sustained high diagnostic accuracy under real-world conditions, directly informing surgical decisions in 92.6% of cases. Human-AI collaboration further reduced diagnostic workload by 35%, avoided 105 ancillary tests and enhanced detection of micrometastases with 87.5% accuracy. Together, these findings position CRISP as a clinical-grade paradigm for AI-driven intraoperative pathology, bridging computational advances with surgical precision and accelerating the translation of artificial intelligence into routine clinical practice.