# Barttender: An approachable & interpretable way to compare medical imaging and non-imaging data

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.12707 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.12707/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 6 of its 22 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Nov 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Axiomatic Attribution for Deep Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.01365/) (2017)
- [Deep Inside Convolutional Networks: Visualising Image Classification Models and Saliency Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6034/) (2013)
- [CheXpert: A Large Chest Radiograph Dataset with Uncertainty Labels and Expert Comparison](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.07031/) (2019)
- [Sanity Checks for Saliency Metrics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01451/) (2019)
- [Best of Both Worlds: Multimodal Contrastive Learning with Tabular and Imaging Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14080/) (2023)
- [Deep Multi-modal Fusion of Image and Non-image Data in Disease Diagnosis and Prognosis: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.15588/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Imaging-based deep learning has transformed healthcare research, yet its clinical adoption remains limited due to challenges in comparing imaging models with traditional non-imaging and tabular data. To bridge this gap, we introduce Barttender, an interpretable framework that uses deep learning for the direct comparison of the utility of imaging versus non-imaging tabular data for tasks like disease prediction. Barttender converts non-imaging tabular features, such as scalar data from electronic health records, into grayscale bars, facilitating an interpretable and scalable deep learning based modeling of both data modalities. Our framework allows researchers to evaluate differences in utility through performance measures, as well as local (sample-level) and global (population-level) explanations. We introduce a novel measure to define global feature importances for image-based deep learning models, which we call gIoU. Experiments on the CheXpert and MIMIC datasets with chest X-rays and scalar data from electronic health records show that Barttender performs comparably to traditional methods and offers enhanced explainability using deep learning models.