Interpretability of a Deep Learning Model in the Application of Cardiac MRI Segmentation with an ACDC Challenge Dataset

TL;DR

This paper applies the D-TCAV explainability method to cardiac MRI segmentation, enabling the discovery of meaningful cardiac concepts and improving transparency of deep learning models used in heart disease diagnosis.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of D-TCAV for cardiac MRI analysis, offering a user-independent approach with reduced pre-processing time for clinicians.

Findings

D-TCAV identifies clinically meaningful cardiac concepts.

The method enhances model transparency and interpretability.

It reduces pre-processing time compared to previous methods.

Abstract

Cardiac Magnetic Resonance (CMR) is the most effective tool for the assessment and diagnosis of a heart condition, which malfunction is the world's leading cause of death. Software tools leveraging Artificial Intelligence already enhance radiologists and cardiologists in heart condition assessment but their lack of transparency is a problem. This project investigates if it is possible to discover concepts representative for different cardiac conditions from the deep network trained to segment crdiac structures: Left Ventricle (LV), Right Ventricle (RV) and Myocardium (MYO), using explainability methods that enhances classification system by providing the score-based values of qualitative concepts, along with the key performance metrics. With introduction of a need of explanations in GDPR explainability of AI systems is necessary. This study applies Discovering and Testing with Concept Activation Vectors (D-TCAV), an interpretaibilty method to extract underlying features important for cardiac disease diagnosis from MRI data. The method provides a quantitative notion of concept importance for disease classified. In previous studies, the base method is applied to the classification of cardiac disease and provides clinically meaningful explanations for the predictions of a black-box deep learning classifier. This study applies a method extending TCAV with a Discovering phase (D-TCAV) to cardiac MRI analysis. The advantage of the D-TCAV method over the base method is that it is user-independent. The contribution of this study is a novel application of the explainability method D-TCAV for cardiac MRI anlysis. D-TCAV provides a shorter pre-processing time for clinicians than the base method.