Relational Graph Convolutional Network for Robust Mass Spectrum Classification
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Supervised machine learning methods have shown impressive performance in interpreting mass signals and automatically segmenting spatially meaningful regions in Mass Spectrometry Imaging (MSI). Such segmentation generates maps that provide researchers with valuable insights into sample composition and serve as a foundation for downstream statistical analyses. However, these models often require data set-specific preprocessing and do not fully exploit the rich mass features available in high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS). Unlike low-resolution mass spectrometry, HRMS reveals additional features such as mass defects and repeated mass differences that carry important chemical information. In this work, we propose a novel deep learning architecture based on a Relational Graph Convolutional Network (R-GCN) that captures and leverages those HRMS mass features. Our model explicitly encodes structural features such as mass defects and known mass differences to represent each spectrum as a graph, enabling the learning of associations between chemically related ion families. To the best of our knowledge, no existing deep learning models for MSI classification incorporate this level of chemically informed mass structure. Most existing methods treat spectra as flat vectors or image-like inputs, thereby ignoring the underlying mass relationships. We evaluate our R-GCN approach against several conventional machine learning and deep learning baselines across diverse MSI data sets, demonstrating its robustness to common signal variations (e.g., mass shift, ion loss). Finally, we integrate Class Activation Mapping (CAM) to enhance model interpretability, enabling the identification of ion families that are relevant to specific biological or spatial regions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".