Grad-CAMO: Learning Interpretable Single-Cell Morphological Profiles from 3D Cell Painting Images

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Gopalakrishnan, Vivek, Ma, Jingzhe, Xie, Zhiyong
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Gopalakrishnan, Vivek
Ma, Jingzhe
Xie, Zhiyong
author_facet Gopalakrishnan, Vivek
Ma, Jingzhe
Xie, Zhiyong
contents Despite their black-box nature, deep learning models are extensively used in image-based drug discovery to extract feature vectors from single cells in microscopy images. To better understand how these networks perform representation learning, we employ visual explainability techniques (e.g., Grad-CAM). Our analyses reveal several mechanisms by which supervised models cheat, exploiting biologically irrelevant pixels when extracting morphological features from images, such as noise in the background. This raises doubts regarding the fidelity of learned single-cell representations and their relevance when investigating downstream biological questions. To address this misalignment between researcher expectations and machine behavior, we introduce Grad-CAMO, a novel single-cell interpretability score for supervised feature extractors. Grad-CAMO measures the proportion of a model's attention that is concentrated on the cell of interest versus the background. This metric can be assessed per-cell or averaged across a validation set, offering a tool to audit individual features vectors or guide the improved design of deep learning architectures. Importantly, Grad-CAMO seamlessly integrates into existing workflows, requiring no dataset or model modifications, and is compatible with both 2D and 3D Cell Painting data. Additional results are available at https://github.com/eigenvivek/Grad-CAMO.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_17615
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Grad-CAMO: Learning Interpretable Single-Cell Morphological Profiles from 3D Cell Painting Images
Gopalakrishnan, Vivek
Ma, Jingzhe
Xie, Zhiyong
Image and Video Processing
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Quantitative Methods
Despite their black-box nature, deep learning models are extensively used in image-based drug discovery to extract feature vectors from single cells in microscopy images. To better understand how these networks perform representation learning, we employ visual explainability techniques (e.g., Grad-CAM). Our analyses reveal several mechanisms by which supervised models cheat, exploiting biologically irrelevant pixels when extracting morphological features from images, such as noise in the background. This raises doubts regarding the fidelity of learned single-cell representations and their relevance when investigating downstream biological questions. To address this misalignment between researcher expectations and machine behavior, we introduce Grad-CAMO, a novel single-cell interpretability score for supervised feature extractors. Grad-CAMO measures the proportion of a model's attention that is concentrated on the cell of interest versus the background. This metric can be assessed per-cell or averaged across a validation set, offering a tool to audit individual features vectors or guide the improved design of deep learning architectures. Importantly, Grad-CAMO seamlessly integrates into existing workflows, requiring no dataset or model modifications, and is compatible with both 2D and 3D Cell Painting data. Additional results are available at https://github.com/eigenvivek/Grad-CAMO.
title Grad-CAMO: Learning Interpretable Single-Cell Morphological Profiles from 3D Cell Painting Images
topic Image and Video Processing
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Quantitative Methods
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.17615