2024/09/19 by Anselm Haselhoff, Haselhoff, Anselm, Kevin Trelenberg +5 · 2 citations
Computer Science · #Anomaly Detection Techniques and Applications #Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV) #Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Generative Adversarial Networks and Image Synthesis #Machine Learning (cs.LG)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2409.12952
openalex publication_date 2024/09/19 · openalex created_date 2024/10/25 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
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.