医学视觉语言模型易因问法变化而答错,本文提出新基准并揭示其错误机制。
PSF-Med: Measuring and Explaining Paraphrase Sensitivity in Medical Vision Language Models
- 构建2.6万条胸片问题及其9万条语义一致的改写对,验证了模型在不同问法下的不稳定性。
- 发现9个模型翻转率3%至37%,部分模型即使无图像也保持一致,依赖语言先验而非视觉信息。
- 定位到关键特征,通过抑制该特征使翻转率降低31%,且提升对图像的依赖性。
医学视觉语言模型在临床医生改写同一问题时可能改变答案,这一缺陷威胁部署安全。我们提出PSF-Med基准,包含26,850条胸部X光片问题及其92,856条语义保持的改写,覆盖MIMIC-CXR、PadChest和VinDr-CXR数据集,涵盖美国、西班牙和越南临床人群。每条改写由大模型基于双向临床蕴含标准判断,跨家族一致性达91.6%。在九种模型中,翻转率从3%到37%不等。然而低翻转率不代表视觉准确:仅文本基线表明,部分模型在移除图像后仍保持一致,说明其依赖语言先验。针对一个模型,我们使用GemmaScope 2稀疏自编码器分析MedGemma 4B,识别出第17层的一个稀疏特征,该特征与提示框架相关,并能预测决策边缘变化。在因果修补中,移除该特征贡献可平均恢复45%的yes减no logits差值,完全逆转15%的翻转。据此,我们在推理阶段钳制该特征,使翻转率下降31%,仅损失1.3个百分点精度,同时减少对文本先验的依赖。结果表明,翻转率本身不足以衡量鲁棒性,评估应同时检验改写稳定性与图像依赖性。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Medical Vision Language Models (VLMs) can change their answers when clinicians rephrase the same question, a failure mode that threatens deployment safety. We introduce PSF-Med, a benchmark of 26,850 chest X-ray questions paired with 92,856 meaning-preserving paraphrases across MIMIC-CXR, PadChest, and VinDr-CXR, spanning clinical populations in the US, Spain, and Vietnam. Every paraphrase is validated by an LLM judge using a bidirectional clinical entailment rubric, with 91.6% cross-family agreement. Across nine VLMs, including general-purpose models, we find flip rates from 3% to 37%. However, low flip rate does not imply visual grounding: text-only baselines show that some models stay consistent even when the image is removed, suggesting they rely on language priors. To study mechanisms in one model, we apply GemmaScope 2 Sparse Autoencoders (SAEs) to MedGemma 4B and analyze FlipBank, a curated set of 158 flip cases. We identify a sparse feature at layer 17 that correlates with prompt framing and predicts decision margin shifts. In causal patching, removing this feature's contribution recovers 45% of the yes-minus-no logit margin on average and fully reverses 15% of flips. Acting on this finding, we show that clamping the identified feature at inference reduces flip rates by 31% relative with only a 1.3 percentage-point accuracy cost, while also decreasing text-prior reliance. These results suggest that flip rate alone is not enough; robustness evaluations should test both paraphrase stability and image reliance.
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