# Deep Prototypical-Parts Ease Morphological Kidney Stone Identification and are Competitively Robust to Photometric Perturbations

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.04077 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.04077/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 10 of its 32 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 Apr 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [This Looks Like That: Deep Learning for Interpretable Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.10574/) (2018)
- [Interpretable Image Classification with Differentiable Prototypes Assignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.02902/) (2021)
- [IAIA-BL: A Case-based Interpretable Deep Learning Model for Classification of Mass Lesions in Digital Mammography](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.12308/) (2021)
- [This Looks Like That, Because ... Explaining Prototypes for Interpretable Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.02863/) (2020)
- [Assessing deep learning methods for the identification of kidney stones in endoscopic images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01146/) (2021)
- [Towards Automatic Recognition of Pure & Mixed Stones using Intraoperative Endoscopic Digital Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.10686/) (2021)
- [On the in vivo recognition of kidney stones using machine learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.08865/) (2022)
- [Boosting Kidney Stone Identification in Endoscopic Images Using Two-Step Transfer Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.13654/) (2022)
- [Improved Kidney Stone Recognition Through Attention and Multi-View Feature Fusion Strategies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.02967/) (2022)
- [Interpretable Deep Learning Classifier by Detection of Prototypical Parts on Kidney Stones Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00252/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Improving Prototypical Parts Abstraction for Case-Based Reasoning Explanations Designed for the Kidney Stone Type Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.12883/) (2024)
- [Causal Scoring Medical Image Explanations: A Case Study On Ex-vivo Kidney Stone Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.01921/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Identifying the type of kidney stones can allow urologists to determine their cause of formation, improving the prescription of appropriate treatments to diminish future relapses. Currently, the associated ex-vivo diagnosis (known as Morpho-constitutional Analysis, MCA) is time-consuming, expensive and requires a great deal of experience, as it requires a visual analysis component that is highly operator dependant. Recently, machine learning methods have been developed for in-vivo endoscopic stone recognition. Deep Learning (DL) based methods outperform non-DL methods in terms of accuracy but lack explainability. Despite this trade-off, when it comes to making high-stakes decisions, it's important to prioritize understandable Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CADx) that suggests a course of action based on reasonable evidence, rather than a model prescribing a course of action. In this proposal, we learn Prototypical Parts (PPs) per kidney stone subtype, which are used by the DL model to generate an output classification. Using PPs in the classification task enables case-based reasoning explanations for such output, thus making the model interpretable. In addition, we modify global visual characteristics to describe their relevance to the PPs and the sensitivity of our model's performance. With this, we provide explanations with additional information at the sample, class and model levels in contrast to previous works. Although our implementation's average accuracy is lower than state-of-the-art (SOTA) non-interpretable DL models by 1.5 %, our models perform 2.8% better on perturbed images with a lower standard deviation, without adversarial training. Thus, Learning PPs has the potential to create more robust DL models.