/deepspot-m

name: deepspot-m
description: Generates transcriptome-wide virtual spatial transcriptomics from H&E histology with DeepSpot-M. Used for predicted log1p-CPM expression from 224x224 tiles at about 20x, querying the released protein-coding gene panel by symbol, and whole-slide prediction after resolution-aware tiling with histolab.
license: PolyForm-Noncommercial-1.0.0
compatibility: Requires deepspotm 1.0.0, Python >=3.10 and PyTorch; network and approved Hugging Face access for initial gated weight download. CPU supported; CUDA optional. Optional histolab 0.7.0 tiling requires a separate Python 3.10/3.11 environment and OpenSlide. AnnData is needed for H5AD export.
allowed-tools: Read Write Edit Bash
metadata:
  version: "1.2"
  skill-author: Ratschlab, ETH Zurich
  last-reviewed: "2026-09-30"

DeepSpot-M

Overview

DeepSpot-M is a multimodal foundation model that maps a 224x224 H&E histology tile to spatial gene expression in log1p-CPM. The output is virtual spatial transcriptomics: one value per queried gene per tile, laid out on the grid the tiles came from.

A LoRA-adapted pathology foundation backbone (Midnight) tokenises the tile. A cross-attention gene decoder lets each gene query attend to the patch tokens, and a gene router hypernetwork builds gene-specific projections from frozen biological embeddings (Evo 2, Orthrus, ProtT5, scGPT, Apertus). Genes enter the model as queryable embeddings rather than fixed output slots, so the released model covers a ~19k protein-coding gene panel including genes unseen in training. The panel ships with the weights as `tokens.csv` and is exposed as `model.gene_names`; genes outside it cannot be queried in this release.

Applied to TCGA, the model produced a virtual spatial transcriptomics atlas of 28,664 slides across 32 cancer types.

Licensing

The code is PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0 and the weights are CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0. The current model access form additionally restricts eligibility to academic/public nonprofit researchers without concurrent commercial affiliations and excludes commercially funded/collaborative use. Read the live declarations before requesting access; a noncommercial intention alone does not establish eligibility. Research use only, not clinical or diagnostic use. Preserve the applicable attribution and licenses.

Installation

uv pip install deepspotm==1.0.0

PyPI 1.0.0 declares Python >=3.10 without an upper bound; that is not proof of compatibility with every future dependency release. Use an isolated environment. Install the PyTorch build that matches your CUDA runtime if using a GPU. The optional histolab 0.7.0 tiler requires Python <3.12 and an older scientific stack: run tiling separately and exchange PNG tiles plus a coordinate manifest.

Model access

The weights are gated:

1. Open <https://huggingface.co/ratschlab/DeepSpotM> and request access. 2. Once access is granted, authenticate the machine that will download them:

hf auth login

The Hugging Face downloader uses cached credentials or `HF_TOKEN`; approval and authentication are separate. Set `HF_HOME` before importing Hub libraries if choosing a cache location. Do not put tokens in code. An approved local model directory can be loaded offline.

Quick start

Illustrative gated inference; the loading/query API and local preprocessing were checked without downloading the weights:

import torch
from PIL import Image
from deepspotm import DeepSpotM

device = "cuda" if torch.cuda.is_available() else "cpu"
revision = "48be27af436a50e5c74175680ac2b7b2596a506b"
model, image_processor = DeepSpotM.from_pretrained(
    "ratschlab/DeepSpotM", source="scgpt", device=device, revision=revision
)

with Image.open("tile.png") as image:
    if image.size != (224, 224):
        raise ValueError("Expected a pre-tiled 224x224 image at verified ~0.5 um/px")
    batch = image_processor(image.convert("RGB")).unsqueeze(0).to(device)
genes = ["EPCAM", "CD3D"]
vals = model.predict_genes(batch, genes).cpu()  # shape (1, 2)

`image_processor` turns a PIL image into a tensor; `unsqueeze(0)` adds the batch dimension, and `predict_genes` takes the batch plus a list of HGNC gene symbols. Values come back in log1p-CPM, aligned with the gene list you passed, so keep that list beside the output to keep the columns labelled. Symbols must be in the released ~19k-gene panel (`model.gene_names`); an unknown symbol raises `KeyError` naming the offending genes.

Tile requirements

Tiles must be 224x224 RGB at roughly 20x magnification (about 0.5 microns per pixel). Check the size at the boundary of your pipeline rather than passing an unchecked crop through:

TILE_PX = 224

def require_tile(tile):
    """Return an RGB 224x224 tile, or raise if the crop is the wrong size."""
    if tile.size != (TILE_PX, TILE_PX):
        raise ValueError(
            f"DeepSpot-M expects a {TILE_PX}x{TILE_PX} tile at about 20x "
            f"(~0.5 microns per pixel); got {tile.size[0]}x{tile.size[1]}. "
            "Re-tile at the matching level or resample the crop."
        )
    return tile.convert("RGB")

Pixel size alone does not verify magnification. Read both MPP axes and the actual level downsample factors; use a native level only if its physical resolution is close enough to the chosen target. Otherwise explicitly resample from sufficiently fine source pixels and record the transform. Never infer 20x from a level number. The returned processor resizes/crops images but cannot establish their physical MPP.

Keep the dependency optional

`deepspotm` and its weights are a heavy, gated dependency. Import it inside the function that needs it so the surrounding project installs, imports and tests without it, and turn an `ImportError` into a message that names every step:

DEEPSPOTM_HELP = (
    "DeepSpot-M is unavailable. Install it with `uv pip install deepspotm==1.0.0`, request "
    "access to the gated weights at https:/