# G-CAME: Gaussian-Class Activation Mapping Explainer for Object Detectors

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.03400 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03400/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 25 of its 34 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Jun 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- ["Why Should I Trust You?": Explaining the Predictions of Any Classifier](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.04938/) (2016)
- [Feature Pyramid Networks for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.03144/) (2016)
- [You Only Look Once: Unified, Real-Time Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02640/) (2015)
- [SSD: Single Shot MultiBox Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.02325/) (2015)
- [YOLOv3: An Incremental Improvement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.02767/) (2018)
- [Learning Deep Features for Discriminative Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.04150/) (2015)
- [Rich feature hierarchies for accurate object detection and semantic segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1311.2524/) (2013)
- [Sanity Checks for Saliency Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.03292/) (2018)
- [YOLOX: Exceeding YOLO Series in 2021](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.08430/) (2021)
- [Grad-CAM++: Improved Visual Explanations for Deep Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.11063/) (2017)
- [RISE: Randomized Input Sampling for Explanation of Black-box Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.07421/) (2018)
- [Focal Loss for Dense Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.02002/) (2017)
- [Score-CAM: Score-Weighted Visual Explanations for Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.01279/) (2019)
- [R-FCN: Object Detection via Region-based Fully Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.06409/) (2016)
- [Top-down Neural Attention by Excitation Backprop](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.00507/) (2016)
- [TOOD: Task-aligned One-stage Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.07755/) (2021)
- [Axiom-based Grad-CAM: Towards Accurate Visualization and Explanation of CNNs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.02312/) (2020)
- [XRAI: Better Attributions Through Regions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.02825/) (2019)
- [Black-box Explanation of Object Detectors via Saliency Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.03204/) (2020)
- [Group-CAM: Group Score-Weighted Visual Explanations for Deep Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13859/) (2021)
- [PAFNet: An Efficient Anchor-Free Object Detector Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.13534/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [LangXAI: Integrating Large Vision Models for Generating Textual Explanations to Enhance Explainability in Visual Perception Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.12525/) (2024)
- [FFAM: Feature Factorization Activation Map for Explanation of 3D Detectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.12601/) (2024)
- [Enhancing the Fairness and Performance of Edge Cameras with Explainable AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.09852/) (2024)
- [XAI-Enhanced Semantic Segmentation Models for Visual Quality Inspection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.09900/) (2024)
- [GeoSEAN: Explainable Country-Level Image Geolocation for ASEAN Regions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.12284/) (2026)
- [Consistent Evidence, Robust Recognition: Faithful Attribution Regularization under Geometric Transformations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.23835/) (2026)
- [Reconstructed holograms and explanation-aware evaluation for low-cost computational pollen analysis in veterinary cytology](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.23017/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Nowadays, deep neural networks for object detection in images are very prevalent. However, due to the complexity of these networks, users find it hard to understand why these objects are detected by models. We proposed Gaussian Class Activation Mapping Explainer (G-CAME), which generates a saliency map as the explanation for object detection models. G-CAME can be considered a CAM-based method that uses the activation maps of selected layers combined with the Gaussian kernel to highlight the important regions in the image for the predicted box. Compared with other Region-based methods, G-CAME can transcend time constraints as it takes a very short time to explain an object. We also evaluated our method qualitatively and quantitatively with YOLOX on the MS-COCO 2017 dataset and guided to apply G-CAME into the two-stage Faster-RCNN model.