Self-Explainable Models (SEMs) rely on Prototypical Concept Learning (PCL) to enable their visual recognition processes more interpretable, but they often struggle in data-scarce settings where insufficient training samples lead to suboptimal performance.To address this limitation, we propose a Few-Shot Prototypical Concept Classification (FSPCC) framework that systematically mitigates two key challenges under low-data regimes: parametric imbalance and representation misalignment. Specifically, our approach leverages a Mixture of LoRA Experts (MoLE) for parameter-efficient adaptation, ensuring a balanced allocation of trainable parameters between the backbone and the PCL module.Meanwhile, cross-module concept guidance enforces tight alignment between the backbone's feature representations and the prototypical concept activation patterns.In addition, we incorporate a multi-level feature preservation strategy that fuses spatial and semantic cues across various layers, thereby enriching the learned representations and mitigating the challenges posed by limited data availability.Finally, to enhance interpretability and minimize concept overlap, we introduce a geometry-aware concept discrimination loss that enforces orthogonality among concepts, encouraging more disentangled and transparent decision boundaries.Experimental results on six popular benchmarks (CUB-200-2011, mini-ImageNet, CIFAR-FS, Stanford Cars, FGVC-Aircraft, and DTD) demonstrate that our approach consistently outperforms existing SEMs by a notable margin, with 4.2%-8.7% relative gains in 5-way 5-shot classification.These findings highlight the efficacy of coupling concept learning with few-shot adaptation to achieve both higher accuracy and clearer model interpretability, paving the way for more transparent visual recognition systems.
As edge devices become more capable and pervasive in wireless networks, there is growing interest in leveraging their collective compute power for distributed learning. However, optimizing learning at the network edge entails unique challenges, particularly when moving beyond conventional settings and objectives. While Federated Learning (FL) has emerged as a key paradigm for distributed model training, critical challenges persist. First, existing approaches often overlook the trade-off between predictive accuracy and interpretability. Second, they struggle to integrate inherently explainable models such as decision trees because their non-differentiable structure makes them not amenable to backpropagation-based training algorithms. Lastly, they lack meaningful mechanisms for continual Machine Learning (ML) model adaptation through Continual Learning (CL) in resource-limited environments. In this paper, we pave the way for a set of novel optimization problems that emerge in distributed learning at the network edge with wirelessly interconnected edge devices, and we identify key challenges and future directions. Specifically, we discuss how Multi-objective optimization (MOO) can be used to address the trade-off between predictive accuracy and explainability when using complex predictive models. Next, we discuss the implications of integrating inherently explainable tree-based models into distributed learning settings. Finally, we investigate how CL strategies can be effectively combined with FL to support adaptive, lifelong learning when limited-size buffers are used to store past data for retraining. Our approach offers a cohesive set of tools for designing privacy-preserving, adaptive, and trustworthy ML solutions tailored to the demands of edge computing and intelligent services.
We develop a novel optimization framework with distribution-based fairness constraints for efficiently producing demographically blind, explainable models across a wide range of fairness levels. This is accomplished through post-processing, avoiding the need for retraining. Our framework, which is based on stochastic gradient descent, can be applied to a wide range of model types, with a particular emphasis on the post-processing of gradient-boosted decision trees. Additionally, we design a broad class of interpretable global bias metrics compatible with our method by building on previous work. We empirically test our methodology on a variety of datasets and compare it to other methods.
The development of biologically interpretable and explainable models remains a key challenge in computational pathology, particularly for multistain immunohistochemistry (IHC) analysis. We present BioX-CPath, an explainable graph neural network architecture for whole slide image (WSI) classification that leverages both spatial and semantic features across multiple stains. At its core, BioX-CPath introduces a novel Stain-Aware Attention Pooling (SAAP) module that generates biologically meaningful, stain-aware patient embeddings. Our approach achieves state-of-the-art performance on both Rheumatoid Arthritis and Sjogren's Disease multistain datasets. Beyond performance metrics, BioX-CPath provides interpretable insights through stain attention scores, entropy measures, and stain interaction scores, that permit measuring model alignment with known pathological mechanisms. This biological grounding, combined with strong classification performance, makes BioX-CPath particularly suitable for clinical applications where interpretability is key. Source code and documentation can be found at: https://github.com/AmayaGS/BioX-CPath.
The ever growing realism and quality of generated videos makes it increasingly harder for humans to spot deepfake content, who need to rely more and more on automatic deepfake detectors. However, deepfake detectors are also prone to errors, and their decisions are not explainable, leaving humans vulnerable to deepfake-based fraud and misinformation. To this end, we introduce ExDDV, the first dataset and benchmark for Explainable Deepfake Detection in Video. ExDDV comprises around 5.4K real and deepfake videos that are manually annotated with text descriptions (to explain the artifacts) and clicks (to point out the artifacts). We evaluate a number of vision-language models on ExDDV, performing experiments with various fine-tuning and in-context learning strategies. Our results show that text and click supervision are both required to develop robust explainable models for deepfake videos, which are able to localize and describe the observed artifacts. Our novel dataset and code to reproduce the results are available at https://github.com/vladhondru25/ExDDV.
Visual foundation models (VFMs) have become increasingly popular due to their state-of-the-art performance. However, interpretability remains crucial for critical applications. In this sense, self-explainable models (SEM) aim to provide interpretable classifiers that decompose predictions into a weighted sum of interpretable concepts. Despite their promise, recent studies have shown that these explanations often lack faithfulness. In this work, we combine VFMs with a novel prototypical architecture and specialized training objectives. By training only a lightweight head (approximately 1M parameters) on top of frozen VFMs, our approach (ProtoFM) offers an efficient and interpretable solution. Evaluations demonstrate that our approach achieves competitive classification performance while outperforming existing models across a range of interpretability metrics derived from the literature. Code is available at https://github.com/hturbe/proto-fm.
Transfers in professional football (soccer) are risky investments because of the large transfer fees and high risks involved. Although data-driven models can be used to improve transfer decisions, existing models focus on describing players' historical progress, leaving their future performance unknown. Moreover, recent developments have called for the use of explainable models combined with uncertainty quantification of predictions. This paper assesses explainable machine learning models based on predictive accuracy and uncertainty quantification methods for the prediction of the future development in quality and transfer value of professional football players. Using a historical data set of data-driven indicators describing player quality and the transfer value of a football player, the models are trained to forecast player quality and player value one year ahead. These two prediction problems demonstrate the efficacy of tree-based models, particularly random forest and XGBoost, in making accurate predictions. In general, the random forest model is found to be the most suitable model because it provides accurate predictions as well as an uncertainty quantification method that naturally arises from the bagging procedure of the random forest model. Additionally, our research shows that the development of player performance contains nonlinear patterns and interactions between variables, and that time series information can provide useful information for the modeling of player performance metrics. Our research provides models to help football clubs make more informed, data-driven transfer decisions by forecasting player quality and transfer value.
As artificial intelligence systems become increasingly integrated into daily life, the field of explainability has gained significant attention. This trend is particularly driven by the complexity of modern AI models and their decision-making processes. The advent of foundation models, characterized by their extensive generalization capabilities and emergent uses, has further complicated this landscape. Foundation models occupy an ambiguous position in the explainability domain: their complexity makes them inherently challenging to interpret, yet they are increasingly leveraged as tools to construct explainable models. In this survey, we explore the intersection of foundation models and eXplainable AI (XAI) in the vision domain. We begin by compiling a comprehensive corpus of papers that bridge these fields. Next, we categorize these works based on their architectural characteristics. We then discuss the challenges faced by current research in integrating XAI within foundation models. Furthermore, we review common evaluation methodologies for these combined approaches. Finally, we present key observations and insights from our survey, offering directions for future research in this rapidly evolving field.
We present a simple usage of pre-trained Vision Transformers (ViTs) for fine-grained analysis, aiming to identify and localize the traits that distinguish visually similar categories, such as different bird species or dog breeds. Pre-trained ViTs such as DINO have shown remarkable capabilities to extract localized, informative features. However, using saliency maps like Grad-CAM can hardly point out the traits: they often locate the whole object by a blurred, coarse heatmap, not traits. We propose a novel approach Prompt Class Attention Map (Prompt-CAM) to the rescue. Prompt-CAM learns class-specific prompts to a pre-trained ViT and uses the corresponding outputs for classification. To classify an image correctly, the true-class prompt must attend to the unique image patches not seen in other classes' images, i.e., traits. As such, the true class's multi-head attention maps reveal traits and their locations. Implementation-wise, Prompt-CAM is almost a free lunch by simply modifying the prediction head of Visual Prompt Tuning (VPT). This makes Prompt-CAM fairly easy to train and apply, sharply contrasting other interpretable methods that design specific models and training processes. It is even simpler than the recently published INterpretable TRansformer (INTR), whose encoder-decoder architecture prevents it from leveraging pre-trained ViTs. Extensive empirical studies on a dozen datasets from various domains (e.g., birds, fishes, insects, fungi, flowers, food, and cars) validate Prompt-CAM superior interpretation capability.
The integration of machine learning (ML) into chemistry offers transformative potential in the design of molecules with targeted properties. However, the focus has often been on creating highly efficient predictive models, sometimes at the expense of interpretability. In this study, we leverage explainable AI techniques to explore the rational design of boron-based Lewis acids, which play a pivotal role in organic reactions due to their electron-ccepting properties. Using Fluoride Ion Affinity as a proxy for Lewis acidity, we developed interpretable ML models based on chemically meaningful descriptors, including ab initio computed features and substituent-based parameters derived from the Hammett linear free-energy relationship. By constraining the chemical space to well-defined molecular scaffolds, we achieved highly accurate predictions (mean absolute error < 6 kJ/mol), surpassing conventional black-box deep learning models in low-data regimes. Interpretability analyses of the models shed light on the origin of Lewis acidity in these compounds and identified actionable levers to modulate it through the nature and positioning of substituents on the molecular scaffold. This work bridges ML and chemist's way of thinking, demonstrating how explainable models can inspire molecular design and enhance scientific understanding of chemical reactivity.
Rolling element bearings are critical components of rotating machinery, with their performance directly influencing the efficiency and reliability of industrial systems. At the same time, bearing faults are a leading cause of machinery failures, often resulting in costly downtime, reduced productivity, and, in extreme cases, catastrophic damage. This study presents a methodology that utilizes Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks to address these challenges through automatic feature selection, hyperparameter tuning and interpretable fault analysis within a unified framework. By training shallow network architectures and minimizing the number of selected features, the framework produces lightweight models that deliver explainable results through feature attribution and symbolic representations of their activation functions. Validated on two widely recognized datasets for bearing fault diagnosis, the framework achieved perfect F1-Scores for fault detection and high performance in fault and severity classification tasks, including 100% F1-Scores in most cases. Notably, it demonstrated adaptability by handling diverse fault types, such as imbalance and misalignment, within the same dataset. The symbolic representations enhanced model interpretability, while feature attribution offered insights into the optimal feature types or signals for each studied task. These results highlight the framework's potential for practical applications, such as real-time machinery monitoring, and for scientific research requiring efficient and explainable models.
Diagnosis prediction is a critical task in healthcare, where timely and accurate identification of medical conditions can significantly impact patient outcomes. Traditional machine learning and deep learning models have achieved notable success in this domain but often lack interpretability which is a crucial requirement in clinical settings. In this study, we explore the use of neuro-symbolic methods, specifically Logical Neural Networks (LNNs), to develop explainable models for diagnosis prediction. Essentially, we design and implement LNN-based models that integrate domain-specific knowledge through logical rules with learnable thresholds. Our models, particularly $M_{\text{multi-pathway}}$ and $M_{\text{comprehensive}}$, demonstrate superior performance over traditional models such as Logistic Regression, SVM, and Random Forest, achieving higher accuracy (up to 80.52\%) and AUROC scores (up to 0.8457) in the case study of diabetes prediction. The learned weights and thresholds within the LNN models provide direct insights into feature contributions, enhancing interpretability without compromising predictive power. These findings highlight the potential of neuro-symbolic approaches in bridging the gap between accuracy and explainability in healthcare AI applications. By offering transparent and adaptable diagnostic models, our work contributes to the advancement of precision medicine and supports the development of equitable healthcare solutions. Future research will focus on extending these methods to larger and more diverse datasets to further validate their applicability across different medical conditions and populations.
MRI and CT are essential clinical cross-sectional imaging techniques for diagnosing complex conditions. However, large 3D datasets with annotations for deep learning are scarce. While methods like DINOv2 are encouraging for 2D image analysis, these methods have not been applied to 3D medical images. Furthermore, deep learning models often lack explainability due to their "black-box" nature. This study aims to extend 2D self-supervised models, specifically DINOv2, to 3D medical imaging while evaluating their potential for explainable outcomes. We introduce the Medical Slice Transformer (MST) framework to adapt 2D self-supervised models for 3D medical image analysis. MST combines a Transformer architecture with a 2D feature extractor, i.e., DINOv2. We evaluate its diagnostic performance against a 3D convolutional neural network (3D ResNet) across three clinical datasets: breast MRI (651 patients), chest CT (722 patients), and knee MRI (1199 patients). Both methods were tested for diagnosing breast cancer, predicting lung nodule dignity, and detecting meniscus tears. Diagnostic performance was assessed by calculating the Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve (AUC). Explainability was evaluated through a radiologist's qualitative comparison of saliency maps based on slice and lesion correctness. P-values were calculated using Delong's test. MST achieved higher AUC values compared to ResNet across all three datasets: breast (0.94$\pm$0.01 vs. 0.91$\pm$0.02, P=0.02), chest (0.95$\pm$0.01 vs. 0.92$\pm$0.02, P=0.13), and knee (0.85$\pm$0.04 vs. 0.69$\pm$0.05, P=0.001). Saliency maps were consistently more precise and anatomically correct for MST than for ResNet. Self-supervised 2D models like DINOv2 can be effectively adapted for 3D medical imaging using MST, offering enhanced diagnostic accuracy and explainability compared to convolutional neural networks.
Models based on human-understandable concepts have received extensive attention to improve model interpretability for trustworthy artificial intelligence in the field of medical image analysis. These methods can provide convincing explanations for model decisions but heavily rely on the detailed annotation of pre-defined concepts. Consequently, they may not be effective in cases where concepts or annotations are incomplete or low-quality. Although some methods automatically discover effective and new visual concepts rather than using pre-defined concepts or could find some human-understandable concepts via large Language models, they are prone to veering away from medical diagnostic evidence and are challenging to understand. In this paper, we propose a concept complement bottleneck model for interpretable medical image diagnosis with the aim of complementing the existing concept set and finding new concepts bridging the gap between explainable models. Specifically, we propose to use concept adapters for specific concepts to mine the concept differences and score concepts in their own attention channels to support almost fairly concept learning. Then, we devise a concept complement strategy to learn new concepts while jointly using known concepts to improve model performance. Comprehensive experiments on medical datasets demonstrate that our model outperforms the state-of-the-art competitors in concept detection and disease diagnosis tasks while providing diverse explanations to ensure model interpretability effectively.
The growing reproducibility crisis in machine learning has brought forward a need for careful examination of research findings. This paper investigates the claims made by Lei et al. (2023) regarding their proposed method, LICO, for enhancing post-hoc interpretability techniques and improving image classification performance. LICO leverages natural language supervision from a vision-language model to enrich feature representations and guide the learning process. We conduct a comprehensive reproducibility study, employing (Wide) ResNets and established interpretability methods like Grad-CAM and RISE. We were mostly unable to reproduce the authors' results. In particular, we did not find that LICO consistently led to improved classification performance or improvements in quantitative and qualitative measures of interpretability. Thus, our findings highlight the importance of rigorous evaluation and transparent reporting in interpretability research.
In the field of explainable AI, a vibrant effort is dedicated to the design of self-explainable models, as a more principled alternative to post-hoc methods that attempt to explain the decisions after a model opaquely makes them. However, this productive line of research suffers from common downsides: lack of reproducibility, unfeasible comparison, diverging standards. In this paper, we propose CaBRNet, an open-source, modular, backward-compatible framework for Case-Based Reasoning Networks: https://github.com/aiser-team/cabrnet.
Visual counterfactual explanation (CF) methods modify image concepts, e.g, shape, to change a prediction to a predefined outcome while closely resembling the original query image. Unlike self-explainable models (SEMs) and heatmap techniques, they grant users the ability to examine hypothetical "what-if" scenarios. Previous CF methods either entail post-hoc training, limiting the balance between transparency and CF quality, or demand optimization during inference. To bridge the gap between transparent SEMs and CF methods, we introduce the GdVAE, a self-explainable model based on a conditional variational autoencoder (CVAE), featuring a Gaussian discriminant analysis (GDA) classifier and integrated CF explanations. Full transparency is achieved through a generative classifier that leverages class-specific prototypes for the downstream task and a closed-form solution for CFs in the latent space. The consistency of CFs is improved by regularizing the latent space with the explainer function. Extensive comparisons with existing approaches affirm the effectiveness of our method in producing high-quality CF explanations while preserving transparency. Code and models are public.
Stereotypes are generalised assumptions about societal groups, and even state-of-the-art LLMs using in-context learning struggle to identify them accurately. Due to the subjective nature of stereotypes, where what constitutes a stereotype can vary widely depending on cultural, social, and individual perspectives, robust explainability is crucial. Explainable models ensure that these nuanced judgments can be understood and validated by human users, promoting trust and accountability. We address these challenges by introducing HEARTS (Holistic Framework for Explainable, Sustainable, and Robust Text Stereotype Detection), a framework that enhances model performance, minimises carbon footprint, and provides transparent, interpretable explanations. We establish the Expanded Multi-Grain Stereotype Dataset (EMGSD), comprising 57,201 labelled texts across six groups, including under-represented demographics like LGBTQ+ and regional stereotypes. Ablation studies confirm that BERT models fine-tuned on EMGSD outperform those trained on individual components. We then analyse a fine-tuned, carbon-efficient ALBERT-V2 model using SHAP to generate token-level importance values, ensuring alignment with human understanding, and calculate explainability confidence scores by comparing SHAP and LIME outputs...
Speech-based depression detection poses significant challenges for automated detection due to its unique manifestation across individuals and data scarcity. Addressing these challenges, we introduce DAAMAudioCNNLSTM and DAAMAudioTransformer, two parameter efficient and explainable models for audio feature extraction and depression detection. DAAMAudioCNNLSTM features a novel CNN-LSTM framework with multi-head Density Adaptive Attention Mechanism (DAAM), focusing dynamically on informative speech segments. DAAMAudioTransformer, leveraging a transformer encoder in place of the CNN-LSTM architecture, incorporates the same DAAM module for enhanced attention and interpretability. These approaches not only enhance detection robustness and interpretability but also achieve state-of-the-art performance: DAAMAudioCNNLSTM with an F1 macro score of 0.702 and DAAMAudioTransformer with an F1 macro score of 0.72 on the DAIC-WOZ dataset, without reliance on supplementary information such as vowel positions and speaker information during training/validation as in previous approaches. Both models' significant explainability and efficiency in leveraging speech signals for depression detection represent a leap towards more reliable, clinically useful diagnostic tools, promising advancements in speech and mental health care. To foster further research in this domain, we make our code publicly available.
Proteins' fuzziness are features for communicating changes in cell signaling instigated by binding with secondary messengers, such as calcium ions, associated with the coordination of muscle contraction, neurotransmitter release, and gene expression. Binding with the disordered parts of a protein, calcium ions must balance their charge states with the shape of calcium-binding proteins and their versatile pool of partners depending on the circumstances they transmit, but it is unclear whether the limited experimental data available can be used to train models to accurately predict the charges of calcium-binding protein variants. Here, we developed a chemistry-informed, machine-learning algorithm that implements a game theoretic approach to explain the output of a machine-learning model without the prerequisite of an excessively large database for high-performance prediction of atomic charges. We used the ab initio electronic structure data representing calcium ions and the structures of the disordered segments of calcium-binding peptides with surrounding water molecules to train several explainable models. Network theory was used to extract the topological features of atomic interactions in the structurally complex data dictated by the coordination chemistry of a calcium ion, a potent indicator of its charge state in protein. With our designs, we provided a framework of explainable machine learning model to annotate atomic charges of calcium ions in calcium-binding proteins with domain knowledge in response to the chemical changes in an environment based on the limited size of scientific data in a genome space.