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Seminar | Computing, Environment and Life Sciences

Regression Concept Vectors for Bidirectional Explanations in Histopathology

CELS Seminar

Abstract: Explanations for deep neural network predictions in terms of domain-related concepts can be valuable in medical applications, where justifications are important for confidence in the decision-making. In this work, we propose a methodology to exploit continuous concept measures as regression concept vectors (RCVs) in the activation space of a layer. The directional derivative of the decision function along the RCVs represents the network sensitivity to increasing values of a given concept measure. When applied to breast cancer grading, nuclei texture emerges as a relevant concept in the detection of tumor tissue in breast lymph node samples. We evaluate score robustness and consistency by statistical analysis.