Fig. 1: Flowchart of study sample selection.

The process for selecting patients with diabetic nephropathy or benign nephrosclerosis from Hospitals A and B is outlined. Renal biopsy specimens from these patients were used for training deep learning models for DLRS-tissue and DLRS-nucleus, testing DLRS, and conducting comparative evaluation and prognosis analysis based on tubulo-interstitial injury scores derived from DLRS.