Cited by 269Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI)Advanced Neural Network ApplicationsDomain Adaptation and Few-Shot Learning

Neural Prototype Trees for Interpretable Fine-grained Image Recognition

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Nauta, Meike, van Bree, Ron, Seifert, Christin·2021·2021 IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR)

Abstract

Prototype-based methods use interpretable representations to address the black-box nature of deep learning models, in contrast to post-hoc explanation methods that only approximate such models. We propose the Neural Prototype Tree (ProtoTree), an intrinsically interpretable deep learning method for fine-grained image recognition. ProtoTree combines prototype learning with decision trees, and thus results in a globally interpretable model by design. Additionally, ProtoTree can locally explain a single prediction by outlining a decision path through the tree. Each node in our binary tree contains a trainable prototypical part. The presence or absence of this learned prototype in an image determines the routing through a node. Decision making is therefore similar to human reasoning: Does the bird have a red throat? And an elongated beak? Then it’s a hummingbird! We tune the accuracy-interpretability trade-off using ensemble methods, pruning and binarizing. We apply pruning without sacrificing accuracy, resulting in a small tree with only 8 learned prototypes along a path to classify a bird from 200 species. An ensemble of 5 ProtoTrees achieves competitive accuracy on the CUB-200-2011 and Stanford Cars data sets. Code is available at github.com/M-Nauta/ProtoTree.

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Authors
Nauta, M., van Bree, R., & Seifert, C.
Affiliations
  • University of Twente (NL)
  • University of Duisburg-Essen (DE)
Venue
2021 IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR)
Publisher
IEEE
Published
2021-06
Pages
14928-14938
ISSN
1063-6919 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W3108752471
Cited by
269
References
64
Citations by year
2026: 28 · 2025: 69 · 2024: 69 · 2023: 70 · 2022: 24 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 1
FWCI
19.75
Type
conference paper
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition/Proceedings - IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition/Proceedings (publishedVersion)
  • arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
  • University of Twente Research Information (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • arXiv (Cornell University)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI)
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Advanced Neural Network Applications
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Domain Adaptation and Few-Shot Learning
Keywords
prototype learning, decision tree, explainable deep learning, fine-grained image classification, explainable AI, local explanations, accuracy-interpretability trade-off, tree pruning, ensemble methods, binarization, bird species classification, CUB-200-2011, Stanford Cars

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