# Deep Learning Based Decision Support for Medicine -- A Case Study on Skin Cancer Diagnosis

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.05112 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.05112/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 39 of its 77 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Mar 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 39)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.0575/) (2014)
- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [A Unified Approach to Interpreting Model Predictions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07874/) (2017)
- [Rethinking the Inception Architecture for Computer Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.00567/) (2015)
- [Intriguing properties of neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6199/) (2013)
- ["Why Should I Trust You?": Explaining the Predictions of Any Classifier](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.04938/) (2016)
- [Learning Deep Features for Discriminative Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.04150/) (2015)
- [Visualizing and Understanding Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1311.2901/) (2013)
- [Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI): Concepts, Taxonomies, Opportunities and Challenges toward Responsible AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.10045/) (2019)
- [Show, Attend and Tell: Neural Image Caption Generation with Visual Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.03044/) (2015)
- [Interpretability Beyond Feature Attribution: Quantitative Testing with Concept Activation Vectors (TCAV)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.11279/) (2017)
- [Sanity Checks for Saliency Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.03292/) (2018)
- [Unmasking Clever Hans Predictors and Assessing What Machines Really Learn](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.10178/) (2019)
- [Methods for Interpreting and Understanding Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.07979/) (2017)
- [Bilinear CNNs for Fine-grained Visual Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1504.07889/) (2015)
- [Concept Whitening for Interpretable Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.01650/) (2020)
- [One Explanation Does Not Fit All: A Toolkit and Taxonomy of AI Explainability Techniques](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.03012/) (2019)
- [Interpretations are useful: penalizing explanations to align neural networks with prior knowledge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.13584/) (2019)
- [Explaining Explanations in AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.01439/) (2018)
- [CA-Net: Comprehensive Attention Convolutional Neural Networks for Explainable Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.10549/) (2020)
- [A Disentangling Invertible Interpretation Network for Explaining Latent Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.13166/) (2020)
- [MDNet: A Semantically and Visually Interpretable Medical Image Diagnosis Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.02485/) (2017)
- [On Interpretability of Deep Learning based Skin Lesion Classifiers using Concept Activation Vectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.02000/) (2020)
- [Medical Image Retrieval using Deep Convolutional Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.08472/) (2017)
- [Resolving challenges in deep learning-based analyses of histopathological images using explanation methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.06943/) (2019)
- [(De)Constructing Bias on Skin Lesion Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08818/) (2019)
- [Deep neural network or dermatologist?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.06612/) (2019)
- [Explaining AI-based Decision Support Systems using Concept Localization Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.01399/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [ExAID: A Multimodal Explanation Framework for Computer-Aided Diagnosis of Skin Lesions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.01249/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Early detection of skin cancers like melanoma is crucial to ensure high chances of survival for patients. Clinical application of Deep Learning (DL)-based Decision Support Systems (DSS) for skin cancer screening has the potential to improve the quality of patient care. The majority of work in the medical AI community focuses on a diagnosis setting that is mainly relevant for autonomous operation. Practical decision support should, however, go beyond plain diagnosis and provide explanations. This paper provides an overview of works towards explainable, DL-based decision support in medical applications with the example of skin cancer diagnosis from clinical, dermoscopic and histopathologic images. Analysis reveals that comparably little attention is payed to the explanation of histopathologic skin images and that current work is dominated by visual relevance maps as well as dermoscopic feature identification. We conclude that future work should focus on meeting the stakeholder's cognitive concepts, providing exhaustive explanations that combine global and local approaches and leverage diverse modalities. Moreover, the possibility to intervene and guide models in case of misbehaviour is identified as a major step towards successful deployment of AI as DL-based DSS and beyond.