Publication
Title
Explainable image classification with evidence counterfactual
Author
Abstract
The complexity of state-of-the-art modeling techniques for image classification impedes the ability to explain model predictions in an interpretable way. Existing explanation methods generally create importance rankings in terms of pixels or pixel groups. However, the resulting explanations lack an optimal size, do not consider feature dependence and are only related to one class. Counterfactual explanation methods are considered promising to explain complex model decisions, since they are associated with a high degree of human interpretability. In this paper, SEDC is introduced as a model-agnostic instance-level explanation method for image classification to obtain visual counterfactual explanations. For a given image, SEDC searches a small set of segments that, in case of removal, alters the classification. As image classification tasks are typically multiclass problems, SEDC-T is proposed as an alternative method that allows specifying a target counterfactual class. We compare SEDC(-T) with popular feature importance methods such as LRP, LIME and SHAP, and we describe how the mentioned importance ranking issues are addressed. Moreover, concrete examples and experiments illustrate the potential of our approach (1) to obtain trust and insight, and (2) to obtain input for model improvement by explaining misclassifications.
Language
English
Source (journal)
arXiv
Publication
2020
Volume/pages
23 p.
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Research group
Project info
Digitalisation and Tax (DigiTax).
Publication type
Subject
Affiliation
Publications with a UAntwerp address
External links
Source file
Record
Identifier
Creation 20.04.2020
Last edited 22.03.2023
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