医学视觉语言模型看似可靠,实则可能依赖文字模式而非图像,存在隐蔽风险。
Consistent but Dangerous: Per-Sample Safety Classification Reveals False Reliability in Medical Vision-Language Models
- 用四象限分类法同时评估模型一致性与图像依赖性
- 98.5%样本虽一致却无视图像,准确率达99.6%但危险
- 仅靠一致性判断会误判,需加测纯文本基线
当部署医学视觉语言模型时,语义等价提示产生相同预测的一致性常被视作可靠性代理。我们发现该代理存在根本缺陷:模型可通过依赖文本模式实现完美一致性,而非基于输入图像。为此提出四象限样本安全分类法,联合评估一致性(提示改写后预测稳定)与图像依赖性(移除图像后预测是否变化)。样本分为理想(一致且依赖图像)、脆弱(不一致但依赖图像)、危险(一致但不依赖图像)、最差(不一致且不依赖图像)。在两个胸部X光数据集(MIMIC-CXR、PadChest)上评估五种医学VLM配置,发现LoRA微调显著降低翻转率,但多数样本进入危险象限:LLaVA-Rad Base在PadChest上翻转率为1.5%,但98.5%样本属危险类。危险样本准确率高达99.6%,熵值低,无法通过常规置信度筛选。观察到翻转率与危险比例负相关(r = -0.89,n=10),建议部署评估必须搭配文本基线测试:一次额外前向传播即可暴露虚假可靠性陷阱。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Consistency under paraphrase, the property that semantically equivalent prompts yield identical predictions, is increasingly used as a proxy for reliability when deploying medical vision-language models (VLMs). We show this proxy is fundamentally flawed: a model can achieve perfect consistency by relying on text patterns rather than the input image. We introduce a four-quadrant per-sample safety taxonomy that jointly evaluates consistency (stable predictions across paraphrased prompts) and image reliance (predictions that change when the image is removed). Samples are classified as Ideal (consistent and image-reliant), Fragile (inconsistent but image-reliant), Dangerous (consistent but not image-reliant), or Worst (inconsistent and not image-reliant). Evaluating five medical VLM configurations across two chest X-ray datasets (MIMIC-CXR, PadChest), we find that LoRA fine-tuning dramatically reduces flip rates but shifts a majority of samples into the Dangerous quadrant: LLaVA-Rad Base achieves a 1.5% flip rate on PadChest while 98.5% of its samples are Dangerous. Critically, Dangerous samples exhibit high accuracy (up to 99.6%) and low entropy, making them invisible to standard confidence-based screening. We observe a negative correlation between flip rate and Dangerous fraction (r = -0.89, n=10) and recommend that deployment evaluations always pair consistency checks with a text-only baseline: a single additional forward pass that exposes the false reliability trap.
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