DINOv3
Paper • 2508.10104 • Published • 319
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DINOv3 Dense Semantic Starter
A starting model for training HistoForge to label tissue compartments as regions. Dense semantic segmentation assigns a class to each pixel; it does not separate touching cells into individual objects.
It starts from the official DINOv3 ViT-L/16 image encoder, with newly initialized segmentation layers that need training.
Compare starter models
H&E-12 starters include histology pretraining. DINOv3 starters use a pretrained image encoder with newly initialized segmentation layers.
| Method | Start here for | H&E-12 weights | DINOv3 weights |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cellpose | Nuclei, cells and irregular or elongated objects | H&E-12 Cellpose | DINOv3 Cellpose |
| HoVer | Large individual tissue structures | H&E-12 HoVer | DINOv3 HoVer |
| Dense semantic | Tissue compartments, rather than separate cells | H&E-12 Semantic | DINOv3 Semantic |
Cellpose and HoVer can separate touching nuclei. These are starting recommendations, not an accuracy or speed ranking; compare trained results on held-out images.
Using the module
Install histoforge/starter-dinov3-semantic and select it as the starting model when training from your QuPath annotations. Define your target classes and image resolution, train, then validate the resulting model on held-out images before using its predictions.
| Output class | What it marks | Returned to QuPath |
|---|---|---|
| Background | Pixels outside the foreground class | No |
| Foreground | Pixels assigned to the foreground class | Yes, as regions |
Foreground is a generic starter label, not a learned biological class. Define your tissue classes during training. Semantic regions are not individual cells.
Measurements
No task-specific measurements are included.
Limitations
- The semantic head is untrained; its predictions are not meaningful before fine-tuning.
- This starter has no task-specific accuracy benchmark or prediction gallery.
- Input images must be RGB with valid pixel-size calibration. The initial recipe uses 0.25 microns per pixel; choose the resolution appropriate for your training data.
Models and training
| Component | Initialization |
|---|---|
| DINOv3 ViT-L/16 backbone | Official LVD-1689M weights |
| Spatial adapter and feature readout | Newly initialized |
| Task head | Newly initialized two-class semantic head |
The model uses the shared 256-channel spatial adapter and four CNN-transformer interaction blocks. Newly initialized components use seed 42. Neural tiles are 256 pixels with 10% overlap; the complete settings are in recipe.json.
The backbone is the official DINOv3 ViT-L/16 LVD-1689M model. No H&E-12 weights are used.
Licences and citations
- Weights: DINOv3 licence.
- Foundation model: Simeoni et al., DINOv3 (2025).
Model tree for histoforge/starter-dinov3-semantic
Base model
timm/vit_large_patch16_dinov3.lvd1689m