# Explainability Guided Multi-Site COVID-19 CT Classification

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.13677 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13677/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 35 of its 45 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Mar 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 35)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [A Simple Framework for Contrastive Learning of Visual Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05709/) (2020)
- [Representation Learning with Contrastive Predictive Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.03748/) (2018)
- [Momentum Contrast for Unsupervised Visual Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.05722/) (2019)
- [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)
- [EfficientNet: Rethinking Model Scaling for Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11946/) (2019)
- [CutMix: Regularization Strategy to Train Strong Classifiers with Localizable Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.04899/) (2019)
- [Learning Deep Features for Discriminative Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.04150/) (2015)
- [Identity Mappings in Deep Residual Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.05027/) (2016)
- [Unsupervised Feature Learning via Non-Parametric Instance-level Discrimination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.01978/) (2018)
- [Learning Important Features Through Propagating Activation Differences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.02685/) (2017)
- [A Survey on Deep Learning in Medical Image Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.05747/) (2017)
- [Learning Transferable Architectures for Scalable Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.07012/) (2017)
- [Self-Supervised Learning of Pretext-Invariant Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01991/) (2019)
- [Interpretable Explanations of Black Boxes by Meaningful Perturbation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.03296/) (2017)
- [Learning multiple visual domains with residual adapters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.08045/) (2017)
- [COVID-Net: A Tailored Deep Convolutional Neural Network Design for Detection of COVID-19 Cases from Chest X-Ray Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.09871/) (2020)
- [Understanding Deep Networks via Extremal Perturbations and Smooth Masks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.08485/) (2019)
- [Full-Gradient Representation for Neural Network Visualization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.00780/) (2019)
- [Tell Me Where to Look: Guided Attention Inference Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.10171/) (2018)
- [Efficient parametrization of multi-domain deep neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.10082/) (2018)
- [MixUp as Locally Linear Out-Of-Manifold Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.02499/) (2018)
- [MS-Net: Multi-Site Network for Improving Prostate Segmentation with Heterogeneous MRI Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.03366/) (2020)
- [COVID-CT-Dataset: A CT Scan Dataset about COVID-19](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.13865/) (2020)
- [SnapMix: Semantically Proportional Mixing for Augmenting Fine-grained Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.04846/) (2020)
- [Relative Attributing Propagation: Interpreting the Comparative Contributions of Individual Units in Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.00605/) (2019)
- [COVIDNet-CT: A Tailored Deep Convolutional Neural Network Design for Detection of COVID-19 Cases from Chest CT Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.05383/) (2020)
- [Rapid AI Development Cycle for the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic: Initial Results for Automated Detection & Patient Monitoring using Deep Learning CT Image Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.05037/) (2020)
- [Improving Deep Learning using Generic Data Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.06020/) (2017)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Radiologist examination of chest CT is an effective way for screening COVID-19 cases. In this work, we overcome three challenges in the automation of this process: (i) the limited number of supervised positive cases, (ii) the lack of region-based supervision, and (iii) the variability across acquisition sites. These challenges are met by incorporating a recent augmentation solution called SnapMix, by a new patch embedding technique, and by performing a test-time stability analysis. The three techniques are complementary and are all based on utilizing the heatmaps produced by the Class Activation Mapping (CAM) explainability method. Compared to the current state of the art, we obtain an increase of five percent in the F1 score on a site with a relatively high number of cases, and a gap twice as large for a site with much fewer training images.