A Review on Explainable Artificial Intelligence for Healthcare: Why, How, and When?
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Abstract (arXiv)
Artificial intelligence (AI) models are increasingly finding applications in the field of medicine. Concerns have been raised about the explainability of the decisions that are made by these AI models. In this article, we give a systematic analysis of explainable artificial intelligence (XAI), with a primary focus on models that are currently being used in the field of healthcare. The literature search is conducted following the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) standards for relevant work published from 1 January 2012 to 02 February 2022. The review analyzes the prevailing trends in XAI and lays out the major directions in which research is headed. We investigate the why, how, and when of the uses of these XAI models and their implications. We present a comprehensive examination of XAI methodologies as well as an explanation of how a trustworthy AI can be derived from describing AI models for healthcare fields. The discussion of this work will contribute to the formalization of the XAI field.
Key facts. Cited by 24 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 70 of its 202 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 10 Apr 2023.
Builds on
70 of 202 references.
References · 70
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- 2016Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localizationcited by 6,690
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38 more
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- 2018A Survey Of Methods For Explaining Black Box Modelscited by 970
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- 2018Model compression via distillation and quantizationcited by 287
- 2018Scalable and accurate deep learning for electronic health recordscited by 275
- 2018Manipulating and Measuring Model Interpretabilitycited by 256
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- 2017Distilling a Neural Network Into a Soft Decision Treecited by 230
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- 2017What do we need to build explainable AI systems for the medical domain?cited by 127
- 2020The role of explainability in creating trustworthy artificial intelligence for health care: a comprehensive survey of the terminology, design choices, and evaluation strategiescited by 91
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Citing papers per year: 2023: 5; 2024: 5; 2025: 9; 2026: 5.
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- 2025CoE: Chain-of-Explanation via Automatic Visual Concept Circuit Description and Polysemanticity Quantificationcited by 9
- 2025Investigating the Duality of Interpretability and Explainability in Machine Learningcited by 8
- 2023StyleCap: Automatic Speaking-Style Captioning from Speech Based on Speech and Language Self-supervised Learning Modelscited by 7
- 2023The Significance of Machine Learning in Clinical Disease Diagnosis: A Reviewcited by 4
- 2024QUCE: The Minimisation and Quantification of Path-Based Uncertainty for Generative Counterfactual Explanationscited by 4
- 2024Interpretable Machine Learning for Survival Analysiscited by 4
- 2025A Design Framework for operationalizing Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare: Requirements, Tradeoffs and Challenges for its Clinical Adoptioncited by 3
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- 2025Visual-Conversational Interface for Evidence-Based Explanation of Diabetes Risk Predictioncited by 2
- 2023Explainable AI in Orthopedics: Challenges, Opportunities, and Prospectscited by 1
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- 2024Choose Your Explanation: A Comparison of SHAP and GradCAM in Human Activity Recognitioncited by 0
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- 2025ITL-LIME: Instance-Based Transfer Learning for Enhancing Local Explanations in Low-Resource Data Settingscited by 0
- 2025Governable AI: Provable Safety Under Extreme Threat Modelscited by 0
- 2025An Integrated Fusion Framework for Ensemble Learning Leveraging Gradient Boosting and Fuzzy Rule-Based Modelscited by 0
- 2026GradCFA: A Hybrid Gradient-Based Counterfactual and Feature Attribution Explanation Algorithm for Local Interpretation of Neural Networkscited by 0
- 2026Modeling Patient Care Trajectories with Transformer Hawkes Processescited by 0
- 2026NEURON: A Neuro-symbolic System for Grounded Clinical Explainabilitycited by 0
- 2026A Step Towards Inherently Interpretable Causal Machine Learning Models For Decision Supportcited by 0
- 2026A Step Towards Inherently Interpretable Causal Machine Learning Models For Decision Support23 Jun 2026
- 2026NEURON: A Neuro-symbolic System for Grounded Clinical Explainability2 May 2026
- 2026Modeling Patient Care Trajectories with Transformer Hawkes Processes7 Apr 2026
- 2026GradCFA: A Hybrid Gradient-Based Counterfactual and Feature Attribution Explanation Algorithm for Local Interpretation of Neural Networks16 Mar 2026
- 2026An interpretable prototype parts-based neural network for medical tabular data5 Mar 2026
- 2025An Integrated Fusion Framework for Ensemble Learning Leveraging Gradient Boosting and Fuzzy Rule-Based Models11 Nov 2025
- 2025Governable AI: Provable Safety Under Extreme Threat Models28 Aug 2025
- 2025ITL-LIME: Instance-Based Transfer Learning for Enhancing Local Explanations in Low-Resource Data Settings19 Aug 2025
- 2025Visual-Conversational Interface for Evidence-Based Explanation of Diabetes Risk Prediction25 Jun 2025
- 2025Scaling Electronic Health Record Foundation Models for Population Health Management30 May 2025
- 2025A Design Framework for operationalizing Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare: Requirements, Tradeoffs and Challenges for its Clinical Adoption27 Apr 2025
- 2025Investigating the Duality of Interpretability and Explainability in Machine Learning27 Mar 2025
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- 2025Modeling Quantum Machine Learning for Genomic Data Analysis14 Jan 2025
- 2024Choose Your Explanation: A Comparison of SHAP and GradCAM in Human Activity Recognition20 Dec 2024
- 2024Explaining Human Activity Recognition with SHAP: Validating Insights with Perturbation and Quantitative Measures6 Nov 2024
- 2024Explainable Artificial Intelligence: A Survey of Needs, Techniques, Applications, and Future Direction30 Aug 2024
- 2024Interpretable Machine Learning for Survival Analysis15 Mar 2024
- 2024QUCE: The Minimisation and Quantification of Path-Based Uncertainty for Generative Counterfactual Explanations27 Feb 2024
- 2023StyleCap: Automatic Speaking-Style Captioning from Speech Based on Speech and Language Self-supervised Learning Models28 Nov 2023
- 2023The Significance of Machine Learning in Clinical Disease Diagnosis: A Review25 Oct 2023
- 2023Deciphering knee osteoarthritis diagnostic features with explainable artificial intelligence: A systematic review18 Aug 2023
- 2023Explainable AI in Orthopedics: Challenges, Opportunities, and Prospects9 Aug 2023
- 2023CARNA: Characterizing Advanced heart failure Risk and hemodyNAmic phenotypes using learned multi-valued decision diagrams11 Jun 2023
- 2024Explainable Artificial Intelligence: A Survey of Needs, Techniques, Applications, and Future Directioncited by 46
- 2025CoE: Chain-of-Explanation via Automatic Visual Concept Circuit Description and Polysemanticity Quantificationcited by 9
- 2025Investigating the Duality of Interpretability and Explainability in Machine Learningcited by 8
- 2023StyleCap: Automatic Speaking-Style Captioning from Speech Based on Speech and Language Self-supervised Learning Modelscited by 7
- 2023The Significance of Machine Learning in Clinical Disease Diagnosis: A Reviewcited by 4
- 2024QUCE: The Minimisation and Quantification of Path-Based Uncertainty for Generative Counterfactual Explanationscited by 4
- 2024Interpretable Machine Learning for Survival Analysiscited by 4
- 2025A Design Framework for operationalizing Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare: Requirements, Tradeoffs and Challenges for its Clinical Adoptioncited by 3
- 2024Explaining Human Activity Recognition with SHAP: Validating Insights with Perturbation and Quantitative Measurescited by 2
- 2025Modeling Quantum Machine Learning for Genomic Data Analysiscited by 2
- 2025Visual-Conversational Interface for Evidence-Based Explanation of Diabetes Risk Predictioncited by 2
- 2023Explainable AI in Orthopedics: Challenges, Opportunities, and Prospectscited by 1
12 most cited of 24 All 24 (JSON)
- 2026A Step Towards Inherently Interpretable Causal Machine Learning Models For Decision Support23 Jun 2026
- 2026NEURON: A Neuro-symbolic System for Grounded Clinical Explainability2 May 2026
- 2026Modeling Patient Care Trajectories with Transformer Hawkes Processes7 Apr 2026
- 2026GradCFA: A Hybrid Gradient-Based Counterfactual and Feature Attribution Explanation Algorithm for Local Interpretation of Neural Networks16 Mar 2026
- 2026An interpretable prototype parts-based neural network for medical tabular data5 Mar 2026
- 2025An Integrated Fusion Framework for Ensemble Learning Leveraging Gradient Boosting and Fuzzy Rule-Based Models11 Nov 2025
- 2025Governable AI: Provable Safety Under Extreme Threat Models28 Aug 2025
- 2025ITL-LIME: Instance-Based Transfer Learning for Enhancing Local Explanations in Low-Resource Data Settings19 Aug 2025
- 2025Visual-Conversational Interface for Evidence-Based Explanation of Diabetes Risk Prediction25 Jun 2025
- 2025Scaling Electronic Health Record Foundation Models for Population Health Management30 May 2025
- 2025A Design Framework for operationalizing Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare: Requirements, Tradeoffs and Challenges for its Clinical Adoption27 Apr 2025
- 2025Investigating the Duality of Interpretability and Explainability in Machine Learning27 Mar 2025
12 newest of 24 All 24 (JSON)