# Benchmarking Class Activation Map Methods for Explainable Brain Hemorrhage Classification on Hemorica Dataset

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.17699 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.17699/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 17 of its 41 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Aug 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [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)
- [EfficientNet: Rethinking Model Scaling for Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11946/) (2019)
- ["Why Should I Trust You?": Explaining the Predictions of Any Classifier](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.04938/) (2016)
- [Learning Deep Features for Discriminative Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.04150/) (2015)
- [EfficientNetV2: Smaller Models and Faster Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00298/) (2021)
- [Grad-CAM++: Improved Visual Explanations for Deep Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.11063/) (2017)
- [Eigen-CAM: Class Activation Map using Principal Components](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.00299/) (2020)
- [Axiom-based Grad-CAM: Towards Accurate Visualization and Explanation of CNNs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.02312/) (2020)
- [Explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) in deep learning-based medical image analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.10912/) (2021)
- [Use HiResCAM instead of Grad-CAM for faithful explanations of convolutional neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.08891/) (2020)
- [Intracranial Hemorrhage Segmentation Using Deep Convolutional Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.08643/) (2019)
- [The state-of-the-art 3D anisotropic intracranial hemorrhage segmentation on non-contrast head CT: The INSTANCE challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.03281/) (2023)
- [Interactive Medical Image Analysis with Concept-based Similarity Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06873/) (2025)
- [Weakly Supervised Intracranial Hemorrhage Segmentation using Head-Wise Gradient-Infused Self-Attention Maps from a Swin Transformer in Categorical Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.04902/) (2023)
- [DiffExplainer: Unveiling Black Box Models Via Counterfactual Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.15182/) (2024)
- [Class Activation Map-based Weakly supervised Hemorrhage Segmentation using Resnet-LSTM in Non-Contrast Computed Tomography images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16627/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [CT Scans As Video: Efficient Intracranial Hemorrhage Detection Using Multi-Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.02521/) (2026)
- [Parameter-efficient Prompt Tuning of Vision Foundation Model With Adaptive Focal Loss for Interpretable MCI Screening](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.15047/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) has become an essential component of medical imaging research, aiming to increase transparency and clinical trust in deep learning models. This study investigates brain hemorrhage diagnosis with a focus on explainability through Class Activation Mapping (CAM) techniques. A pipeline was developed to extract pixellevel segmentation and detection annotations from classification models using nine state-of-the-art CAM algorithms, applied across multiple network stages, and quantitatively evaluated on the Hemorica dataset, which uniquely provides both slice-level labels and high-quality segmentation masks. Metrics including Dice, IoU, and pixel-wise overlap were employed to benchmark CAM variants. Results show that the strongest localization performance occurred at stage 5 of EfficientNetV2S, with HiResCAM yielding the highest bounding-box alignment and AblationCAM achieving the best pixel-level Dice (0.57) and IoU (0.40), representing strong accuracy given that models were trained solely for classification without segmentation supervision. To the best of current knowledge, this is among the f irst works to quantitatively compare CAM methods for brain hemorrhage detection, establishing a reproducible benchmark and underscoring the potential of XAI-driven pipelines for clinically meaningful AI-assisted diagnosis.