# Explaining the Implicit Neural Canvas: Connecting Pixels to Neurons by Tracing their Contributions

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.10217 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.10217/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 37 of its 54 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Jan 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 37)

- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [Implicit Neural Representations with Periodic Activation Functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09661/) (2020)
- [Fourier Features Let Networks Learn High Frequency Functions in Low Dimensional Domains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.10739/) (2020)
- [pixelNeRF: Neural Radiance Fields from One or Few Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02190/) (2020)
- [Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI): Concepts, Taxonomies, Opportunities and Challenges toward Responsible AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.10045/) (2019)
- [D-NeRF: Neural Radiance Fields for Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13961/) (2020)
- [Grad-CAM++: Improved Visual Explanations for Deep Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.11063/) (2017)
- [Scene Representation Networks: Continuous 3D-Structure-Aware Neural Scene Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.01618/) (2019)
- [NeRF++: Analyzing and Improving Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.07492/) (2020)
- [PIFu: Pixel-Aligned Implicit Function for High-Resolution Clothed Human Digitization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.05172/) (2019)
- [Network Dissection: Quantifying Interpretability of Deep Visual Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.05796/) (2017)
- [Differentiable Volumetric Rendering: Learning Implicit 3D Representations without 3D Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.07372/) (2019)
- [Explaining Explanations: An Overview of Interpretability of Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.00069/) (2018)
- [From Anecdotal Evidence to Quantitative Evaluation Methods: A Systematic Review on Evaluating Explainable AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.08164/) (2022)
- [NeRV: Neural Representations for Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.13903/) (2021)
- [COIN: COmpression with Implicit Neural representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.03123/) (2021)
- [WIRE: Wavelet Implicit Neural Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.05187/) (2023)
- [Texture Fields: Learning Texture Representations in Function Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.07259/) (2019)
- [Compositional Explanations of Neurons](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.14032/) (2020)
- [Implicit Neural Representations for Image Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.04267/) (2021)
- [Axiom-based Grad-CAM: Towards Accurate Visualization and Explanation of CNNs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.02312/) (2020)
- [Video Panoptic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11339/) (2020)
- [Natural Language Descriptions of Deep Visual Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11114/) (2022)
- [A Structured Dictionary Perspective on Implicit Neural Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.01917/) (2021)
- [HNeRV: A Hybrid Neural Representation for Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02633/) (2023)
- [Use HiResCAM instead of Grad-CAM for faithful explanations of convolutional neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.08891/) (2020)
- [Transformers as Meta-Learners for Implicit Neural Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.02801/) (2022)
- [Deep Learning on Implicit Neural Representations of Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05438/) (2023)
- [NIRVANA: Neural Implicit Representations of Videos with Adaptive Networks and Autoregressive Patch-wise Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.14593/) (2022)
- [DNeRV: Modeling Inherent Dynamics via Difference Neural Representation for Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06544/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Latent-INR: A Flexible Framework for Implicit Representations of Videos with Discriminative Semantics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.02672/) (2024)
- [SASNet: Spatially-Adaptive Sinusoidal Networks for INRs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.09750/) (2025)
- [How to Design and Train Your Implicit Neural Representation for Video Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.24127/) (2025)
- [TeCoNeRV: Leveraging Temporal Coherence for Compressible Neural Representations for Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.16711/) (2026)
- [What Cohort INRs Encode and Where to Freeze Them](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.08298/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The many variations of Implicit Neural Representations (INRs), where a neural network is trained as a continuous representation of a signal, have tremendous practical utility for downstream tasks including novel view synthesis, video compression, and image super-resolution. Unfortunately, the inner workings of these networks are seriously under-studied. Our work, eXplaining the Implicit Neural Canvas (XINC), is a unified framework for explaining properties of INRs by examining the strength of each neuron's contribution to each output pixel. We call the aggregate of these contribution maps the Implicit Neural Canvas and we use this concept to demonstrate that the INRs we study learn to "see" the frames they represent in surprising ways. For example, INRs tend to have highly distributed representations. While lacking high-level object semantics, they have a significant bias for color and edges, and are almost entirely space-agnostic. We arrive at our conclusions by examining how objects are represented across time in video INRs, using clustering to visualize similar neurons across layers and architectures, and show that this is dominated by motion. These insights demonstrate the general usefulness of our analysis framework. Our project page is available at https://namithap10.github.io/xinc.