# Improving Prototypical Parts Abstraction for Case-Based Reasoning Explanations Designed for the Kidney Stone Type Recognition

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.12883 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.12883/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 27 of its 51 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Sep 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 27 of 27)

- [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)
- [Delving Deep into Rectifiers: Surpassing Human-Level Performance on ImageNet Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.01852/) (2015)
- [Interpretability Beyond Feature Attribution: Quantitative Testing with Concept Activation Vectors (TCAV)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.11279/) (2017)
- [Sanity Checks for Saliency Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.03292/) (2018)
- [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)
- [This Looks Like That: Deep Learning for Interpretable Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.10574/) (2018)
- [Towards Robust Interpretability with Self-Explaining Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.07538/) (2018)
- [Approximating CNNs with Bag-of-local-Features models works surprisingly well on ImageNet](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.00760/) (2019)
- [Concept Whitening for Interpretable Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.01650/) (2020)
- [Neural Prototype Trees for Interpretable Fine-grained Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02046/) (2020)
- [Seeing What a GAN Cannot Generate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.11626/) (2019)
- [Explainable Deep Learning: A Field Guide for the Uninitiated](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.14545/) (2020)
- [Interpretable Image Classification with Differentiable Prototypes Assignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.02902/) (2021)
- [This Looks Like That... Does it? Shortcomings of Latent Space Prototype Interpretability in Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.02968/) (2021)
- [Concept-level Debugging of Part-Prototype Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15769/) (2022)
- [This Looks Like That, Because ... Explaining Prototypes for Interpretable Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.02863/) (2020)
- [VCNet: A self-explaining model for realistic counterfactual generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10847/) (2022)
- [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)
- [Deep Prototypical-Parts Ease Morphological Kidney Stone Identification and are Competitively Robust to Photometric Perturbations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.04077/) (2023)
- [Improving automatic endoscopic stone recognition using a multi-view fusion approach enhanced with two-step transfer learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03193/) (2023)
- [SuSana Distancia is all you need: Enforcing class separability in metric learning via two novel distance-based loss functions for few-shot image classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.09062/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [FedAgain: A Trust-Based and Robust Federated Learning Strategy for an Automated Kidney Stone Identification in Ureteroscopy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.19512/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The in-vivo identification of the kidney stone types during an ureteroscopy would be a major medical advance in urology, as it could reduce the time of the tedious renal calculi extraction process, while diminishing infection risks. Furthermore, such an automated procedure would make possible to prescribe anti-recurrence treatments immediately. Nowadays, only few experienced urologists are able to recognize the kidney stone types in the images of the videos displayed on a screen during the endoscopy. Thus, several deep learning (DL) models have recently been proposed to automatically recognize the kidney stone types using ureteroscopic images. However, these DL models are of black box nature whicl limits their applicability in clinical settings. This contribution proposes a case-based reasoning DL model which uses prototypical parts (PPs) and generates local and global descriptors. The PPs encode for each class (i.e., kidney stone type) visual feature information (hue, saturation, intensity and textures) similar to that used by biologists. The PPs are optimally generated due a new loss function used during the model training. Moreover, the local and global descriptors of PPs allow to explain the decisions ("what" information, "where in the images") in an understandable way for biologists and urologists. The proposed DL model has been tested on a database including images of the six most widespread kidney stone types. The overall average classification accuracy was 90.37. When comparing this results with that of the eight other DL models of the kidney stone state-of-the-art, it can be seen that the valuable gain in explanability was not reached at the expense of accuracy which was even slightly increased with respect to that (88.2) of the best method of the literature. These promising and interpretable results also encourage urologists to put their trust in AI-based solutions.