通过特征解耦提升医学影像模型泛化能力,减少对虚假关联的依赖。
Mitigating Shortcut Learning via Feature Disentanglement in Medical Imaging: A Benchmark Study
- 采用对抗学习与低相关性分解方法分离任务特征与混淆因素。
- 在强虚假相关下分类性能提升,且解耦效果优于仅数据重平衡。
- 适合关注模型可靠性与跨机构泛化的医学AI研究者使用。
尽管深度学习模型在医学影像分类中表现优异,但常依赖捷径学习,利用与目标任务无因果关系的伪相关或混杂因素,这在临床场景中存在风险,因模型需在不同机构、人群和采集条件下泛化。特征解耦是一种有前景的方法,可通过分离潜在表示中的任务相关与混杂相关特征来缓解此问题。本研究系统评估了多种特征解耦方法在医学影像中的捷径缓解效果,包括对抗学习与基于依赖最小化的隐空间拆分。我们在一个人工数据集及两个医学数据集(含自然与合成混杂因素)上,通过隐空间分析评估分类性能与解耦质量,并考察不同混杂程度下的鲁棒性及方法间的计算效率差异。结果表明,在强伪相关训练条件下,解耦方法显著提升了分类性能;隐空间分析揭示了分类指标未反映的表征质量差异,凸显各方法优劣。模型对捷径的依赖程度随训练数据中混杂强度变化。最佳模型结合数据重平衡与模型级解耦,在保持相似计算效率的同时,实现了更强更稳健的捷径缓解效果。项目代码已公开于 https://github.com/berenslab/medical-shortcut-mitigation。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Although deep learning models in medical imaging often achieve excellent classification performance, they can rely on shortcut learning, exploiting spurious correlations or confounding factors that are not causally related to the target task. This poses risks in clinical settings, where models must generalize across institutions, populations, and acquisition conditions. Feature disentanglement is a promising approach to mitigate shortcut learning by separating task-relevant information from confounder-related features in latent representations. In this study, we systematically evaluated feature disentanglement methods for mitigating shortcuts in medical imaging, including adversarial learning and latent space splitting based on dependence minimization. We assessed classification performance and disentanglement quality using latent space analyses across one artificial and two medical datasets with natural and synthetic confounders. We also examined robustness under varying levels of confounding and compared computational efficiency across methods. We found that shortcut mitigation methods improved classification performance under strong spurious correlations during training. Latent space analyses revealed differences in representation quality not captured by classification metrics, highlighting the strengths and limitations of each method. Model reliance on shortcuts depended on the degree of confounding in the training data. The best-performing models combine data-centric rebalancing with model-centric disentanglement, achieving stronger and more robust shortcut mitigation than rebalancing alone while maintaining similar computational efficiency. The project code is publicly available at https://github.com/berenslab/medical-shortcut-mitigation.
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