As summarized in Fig. 2F, the tumor-domain spaDEGs detected by iIMPACT showed higher overlap with the known breast cancer gene set than the genes detected by SpaGCN, SpatialDE, and SPARK, respectively, including two example genes that can only be detected by iIMPACT (Fig. 2G): COX6C, a known biomarker for the identification of hormone-responsive breast cancer [36], and ELF3, an epithelial-specific gene that is a novel therapeutic target of breast cancer and has been amplified in early breast cancer [37]. Here, COX6C is linked to breast carcinoma.