{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,30]],"date-time":"2026-01-30T20:51:25Z","timestamp":1769806285545,"version":"3.49.0"},"reference-count":46,"publisher":"Public Library of Science (PLoS)","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,29]],"date-time":"2026-01-29T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1769644800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["12471469"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["12471469"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"Fundamental Research Operating Grants of Xi\u2019an Jiaotong University","award":["xzy012023038"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["xzy012023038"]}]},{"name":"Grant of Key Laboratory of Target Cognition and Application Technology","award":["2023-CXPT-LC-005"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2023-CXPT-LC-005"]}]},{"name":"Technology Field Funds","award":["2023-JCJQ-JJ-0760"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2023-JCJQ-JJ-0760"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["www.ploscompbiol.org"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["PLoS Comput Biol"],"abstract":"<jats:p>The rational utilization of multimodal spatial transcriptomics (ST) data enables accurate identification of spatial domains, which is essential for investigating cellular structure and functions. In this study, we proposed SpaConTDS, a novel framework that integrates reinforcement learning with self-supervised multimodal contrastive learning. SpaConTDS generates positive and negative samples through data augmentation and a pseudo-label tuple perturbation strategy, enabling the learning of fused representations that capture global semantics and cross-modal interactions. The model\u2019s hyper-parameters are dynamically optimized using reinforcement learning. Extensive experiments across various resolutions and platforms demonstrate that SpaConTDS achieves state-of-the-art accuracy in spatial domain identification and outperforms existing methods in downstream tasks such as denoising, trajectory inference, and UMAP visualization. Moreover, SpaConTDS effectively integrates multiple tissue sections and corrects batch effects without requiring prior alignment. Compared to existing approaches, SpaConTDS offers more robust fused representations of multimodal data, providing researchers with a flexible and powerful tool for a wide range of spatial transcriptomics analyses.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pcbi.1013893","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,29]],"date-time":"2026-01-29T18:34:22Z","timestamp":1769711662000},"page":"e1013893","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1371\/journal.pcbi.corrections_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["SpaConTDS: A multimodal contrastive learning framework for identifying spatial domains by applying tuple disturbing 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