arXiv:2606.06224cs.CVcs.LG2026-06

用逻辑规则解释病理图像分类模型决策,提升可读性。

Symb-xMIL: Symbolic Explanations for Multiple Instance Learning in Digital Pathology

论文配图:Symb-xMIL: Symbolic Explanations for Multiple Instance Learning in Digital Pathology
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 通过逻辑关系(如与、或、非)量化模型决策依据
  • 在真实癌症数据中发现隐藏错误并揭示异质性决策模式
  • 适合临床医生和研究人员理解模型推理过程

多实例学习(MIL)模型的解释广泛应用于数字病理学中的验证与发现。现有方法主要依赖热图突出关键区域,但无法说明不同组织区域的证据如何组合形成预测,限制了可解释性,尤其当决策依赖于组织特征间的交互时。我们提出符号可解释MIL(Symb-xMIL),一种后处理解释框架,量化MIL模型行为与人类可读决策规则之间的对齐度,这些规则以逻辑关系(如与、或、非)表达输入特征间的关系。对齐得分揭示了模型预测背后的语义模式。我们在合成及真实病理数据集上评估Symb-xMIL:在合成数据中可靠恢复真实逻辑规则;在临床肿瘤检测任务中,最佳对齐规则揭示了异质性决策模式并暴露隐藏模型错误;在TCGA-HNSCC头颈癌队列的HPV预测任务中,该框架在仅基于HPV状态的基础上进一步细化患者生存分层,具有潜在临床意义。总体而言,Symb-xMIL将MIL可解释性从视觉定位扩展至结构化规则推理,实现更透明、语义化的模型解释。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Explanations of multiple instance learning (MIL) models are widely used for validation and discovery in digital histopathology. Existing methods primarily rely on heatmaps that highlight influential regions but do not explain how evidence from different tissue regions is combined to produce a prediction. This limits interpretability, especially when decisions depend on interactions between tissue features. We introduce Symbolic explainable MIL (Symb-xMIL), a post-hoc explanation framework that quantifies how a MIL model's behavior aligns with human-readable decision rules, expressed as logical relationships (e.g., AND, OR, NOT) between input features. These alignment scores reveal semantic patterns underlying the model's predictions. We evaluate Symb-xMIL on synthetic and real-world histopathology datasets. On synthetic MIL data, Symb-xMIL reliably recovers ground-truth logical rules. In a clinical tumor detection task, the best-aligned rules uncover heterogeneous decision patterns and expose hidden model errors. On an HPV-prediction task on TCGA-HNSCC, a cohort of head and neck cancer, our framework refines patient survival stratification beyond HPV status with potential clinical relevance. Overall, Symb-xMIL extends MIL explainability beyond visual attribution toward structured, rule-based reasoning, enabling more transparent and semantically grounded interpretation of model predictions.

可解释性病理分析逻辑规则MIL

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