Fair Diagnosis: Leveraging Causal Modeling to Mitigate Medical Bias

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Tian, Bowei, He, Yexiao, Liu, Meng, Dai, Yucong, Wang, Ziyao, He, Shwai, Sun, Guoheng, Shen, Zheyu, Ye, Wanghao, Wu, Yongkai, Li, Ang
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Tian, Bowei
He, Yexiao
Liu, Meng
Dai, Yucong
Wang, Ziyao
He, Shwai
Sun, Guoheng
Shen, Zheyu
Ye, Wanghao
Wu, Yongkai
Li, Ang
author_facet Tian, Bowei
He, Yexiao
Liu, Meng
Dai, Yucong
Wang, Ziyao
He, Shwai
Sun, Guoheng
Shen, Zheyu
Ye, Wanghao
Wu, Yongkai
Li, Ang
contents In medical image analysis, model predictions can be affected by sensitive attributes, such as race and gender, leading to fairness concerns and potential biases in diagnostic outcomes. To mitigate this, we present a causal modeling framework, which aims to reduce the impact of sensitive attributes on diagnostic predictions. Our approach introduces a novel fairness criterion, \textbf{Diagnosis Fairness}, and a unique fairness metric, leveraging path-specific fairness to control the influence of demographic attributes, ensuring that predictions are primarily informed by clinically relevant features rather than sensitive attributes. By incorporating adversarial perturbation masks, our framework directs the model to focus on critical image regions, suppressing bias-inducing information. Experimental results across multiple datasets demonstrate that our framework effectively reduces bias directly associated with sensitive attributes while preserving diagnostic accuracy. Our findings suggest that causal modeling can enhance both fairness and interpretability in AI-powered clinical decision support systems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_04739
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Fair Diagnosis: Leveraging Causal Modeling to Mitigate Medical Bias
Tian, Bowei
He, Yexiao
Liu, Meng
Dai, Yucong
Wang, Ziyao
He, Shwai
Sun, Guoheng
Shen, Zheyu
Ye, Wanghao
Wu, Yongkai
Li, Ang
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
In medical image analysis, model predictions can be affected by sensitive attributes, such as race and gender, leading to fairness concerns and potential biases in diagnostic outcomes. To mitigate this, we present a causal modeling framework, which aims to reduce the impact of sensitive attributes on diagnostic predictions. Our approach introduces a novel fairness criterion, \textbf{Diagnosis Fairness}, and a unique fairness metric, leveraging path-specific fairness to control the influence of demographic attributes, ensuring that predictions are primarily informed by clinically relevant features rather than sensitive attributes. By incorporating adversarial perturbation masks, our framework directs the model to focus on critical image regions, suppressing bias-inducing information. Experimental results across multiple datasets demonstrate that our framework effectively reduces bias directly associated with sensitive attributes while preserving diagnostic accuracy. Our findings suggest that causal modeling can enhance both fairness and interpretability in AI-powered clinical decision support systems.
title Fair Diagnosis: Leveraging Causal Modeling to Mitigate Medical Bias
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.04739