SmartPath intelligently analyzes complex pathology images to support diagnosis and prognosis, enabling precise personalized treatment
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) today launched SmartPath, a comprehensive artificial intelligence (AI) system designed to transform the entire pathology workflow for cancer care. The system was developed by an HKUST research team led by Prof. CHEN Hao, Director of Collaboration Center for Medical and Engineering Innovation, and Assistant Professor of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. SmartPath provides integrated support for clinical diagnosis, subtyping, biomarker quantification, treatment response assessment, and prognostic follow-up across a wide spectrum of cancers, aiming to accelerate turnaround times and enhance the personalization of treatment plans.
Developed from one of the largest and most diverse pathology datasets, SmartPath was trained on more than half million whole slide images spanning 34 major tissue sites. This enables the system to assist healthcare professionals with over 100 distinct clinical tasks, including cancer classification, subtyping, treatment response evaluation, survival rate prediction, and the generation of detailed pathology reports.
A key breakthrough is SmartPath's ability to diagnose several of Hong Kong's most prevalent cancers, including lung, breast, colorectal, and gastric cancer, building upon a unified framework of pathology foundation model.
Groundbreaking Features for End-to-End Clinical Support
SmartPath's capabilities are driven by two integrated large AI models:
- Exceptional Generalization Across Cancer Types: At its core, the Generalizable Pathology Foundation Model (GPFM) provides a unified framework for accurate tumor identification, subtyping and biomarker quantification across different cancer tissues. This allows the system to not only diagnose but also predict patient survival outcomes and assess potential treatment response, forming a data-driven foundation for personalized therapy plans.
- Multimodal Intelligence for Deeper Insights: The Multimodal Knowledge-enhanced Whole-slide Pathology Foundation Model (mSTAR) integrates pathology images with rich contextual data, including pathology reports and transcriptomics. This fusion enables automated, minute-speed generation of comprehensive pathology reports and offers a powerful visual question-answering feature, allowing pathologists to query the system about specific details on a slide.
- Seamless Integration into Clinical Workflows: SmartPath is engineered as an end-to-end solution that streamlines the cancer care cycle—from rapid initial slide analysis and proactive risk alerts to AI-assisted reporting. This integration helps reduce diagnostic bottlenecks, allowing pathologists to focus on critical diagnostic decisions and complex cases.
Prof. Chen Hao, who led the development team, stated: “The development of SmartPath has been a collaborative journey with leading clinical partners. We are currently working with over a dozen top-tier hospitals in Hong Kong and the Chinese Mainland, which has been fundamental to its rigorous validation. This extensive partnership network allows us to test the system's performance across a vast array of real-world clinical tasks and diverse patient populations.”
“The results are promising: SmartPath has consistently ranked first in a significant majority of benchmarked tasks, demonstrating superior accuracy in critical areas like malignancy identification and treatment response prediction. Furthermore, this continuous stream of real-world data creates a powerful feedback loop. It fuels our machine-learning process, enabling us to perpetually refine the algorithms and enhance the system's diagnostic accuracy and predictive power. This isn't a static tool; it's a continuously evolving system that grows smarter with every clinical application, truly paving the way for a new standard in intelligent, personalized medicine,” added Prof. Chen.
Proven Performance in Rigorous Clinical Trials
SmartPath is currently undergoing multi-center clinical validation in multiple top-tier hospitals in the Chinese Mainland and Hong Kong. In comprehensive benchmarking, the system significantly outperformed existing models. In a recent prospective study at Nanfang Hospital, SmartPath has demonstrated exceptional performance, achieving an accuracy greater than 95% across multiple cancer types including lung, breast, colorectal, etc. These results consistently confirm its ability to enhance diagnostic accuracy, reliably predict patient survival, and generate detailed pathology reports rapidly.
Prof. LIANG Li , Director of Department of Pathology, Nanfang Hospital, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Southern Medical University, commented on the clinical validation, “The preliminary results from our recent trials are highly encouraging. SmartPath has demonstrated a remarkable ability to improve the accuracy of malignancy identification and provide reliable prognostic predictions. The system's rapid generation of extensive preliminary reports has proven to cut down our diagnostic turnaround time significantly—a crucial factor in managing time-sensitive cancer cases. We are now witnessing the future of pathology—where AI-powered systems like SmartPath seamlessly integrate into the clinical workflow, augmenting our diagnostic precision and empowering pathologists to make more informed, data-driven decisions for precise and personalized patient care.”
The benchmark and framework established by the HKUST team and collaborative partners set a new standard for the field, providing a robust and scalable foundation that is expected to accelerate future research in computational pathology for precision oncology and smart healthcare globally.
The HKUST research team is now expanding SmartPath's capabilities to address additional cancer types, with particular focus on rare and genetically complex malignancies. These research initiatives aim to enhance the system's predictive models and further strengthen its role in advancing precision medicine through more targeted therapeutic strategies and improved patient stratification.
Part of the research outcomes underpinning SmartPath was recently published in the top-tier journal Nature Biomedical Engineering.
About The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) (https://hkust.edu.hk/) is a world-class university that excels in driving innovative education, research excellence, and impactful knowledge transfer. With a holistic and interdisciplinary pedagogy approach, HKUST was ranked 3rd in the Times Higher Education’s Young University Rankings 2024, 19th Worldwide and No.1 in Hong Kong in Times Higher Education’s Impact Rankings 2025. Thirteen HKUST subjects were ranked among the world’s top 50 in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2025, with “Data Science and Artificial Intelligence” holding the 17th place, maintaining its position as first in Hong Kong. Our graduates are highly competitive, consistently ranking among the world’s top 30 most sought-after employees. In terms of research and entrepreneurship, over 80% of our work was rated “Internationally excellent” or “world leading” in the latest Research Assessment Exercise 2020 of Hong Kong’s University Grants Committee. As of July 2025, HKUST members have founded over 1,900 active start-ups, including 10 Unicorns and 17 exits (IPO or M&A).
(This news was originally published by the HKUST Global Engagement and Communications Office here.)
