2023/12/10 by Ravidu Suien Rammuni Silva, Silva, Ravidu Suien Rammuni, Jordan J. Bird +1
Computer Science · Materials Science · #Advanced Neural Network Applications #Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI) #Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV) #Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Machine Learning (cs.LG) #Machine Learning in Materials Science
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2312.05975
openalex publication_date 2023/12/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Explainability is a vital aspect of modern AI for real-world impact and usability. The main objective of this paper is to emphasise the need to understand the predictions of Computer Vision models, specifically Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) models. Existing methods for explaining CNN predictions are largely based on Gradient-weighted Class Activation Maps (Grad-CAM) and focus solely on a single target class; this assumption about the target class selection neglects a large portion of the predictor CNN's prediction process. In this paper, we present an exhaustive methodology, called Fused Multi-class Gradient-weighted Class Activation Map (FM-G-CAM), that considers multiple top-predicted classes and provides a holistic explanation of the predictor CNN's rationale. We also provide a detailed mathematical and algorithmic description of our method. Furthermore, alongside a concise comparison of existing methods, we compare FM-G-CAM with Grad-CAM, quantitatively and qualitatively highlighting its benefits through real-world practical use cases. Finally, we present an open-source Python library with an FM-G-CAM implementation to conveniently generate saliency maps for CNN-based model predictions.