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Main Authors: Bongratz, Fabian, Wolf, Tom Nuno, Ramon, Jaume Gual, Wachinger, Christian
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.20267
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author Bongratz, Fabian
Wolf, Tom Nuno
Ramon, Jaume Gual
Wachinger, Christian
author_facet Bongratz, Fabian
Wolf, Tom Nuno
Ramon, Jaume Gual
Wachinger, Christian
contents Interpretable models are crucial for supporting clinical decision-making, driving advances in their development and application for medical images. However, the nature of 3D volumetric data makes it inherently challenging to visualize and interpret intricate and complex structures like the cerebral cortex. Cortical surface renderings, on the other hand, provide a more accessible and understandable 3D representation of brain anatomy, facilitating visualization and interactive exploration. Motivated by this advantage and the widespread use of surface data for studying neurological disorders, we present the eXplainable Surface Vision Transformer (X-SiT). This is the first inherently interpretable neural network that offers human-understandable predictions based on interpretable cortical features. As part of X-SiT, we introduce a prototypical surface patch decoder for classifying surface patch embeddings, incorporating case-based reasoning with spatially corresponding cortical prototypes. The results demonstrate state-of-the-art performance in detecting Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia while additionally providing informative prototypes that align with known disease patterns and reveal classification errors.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_20267
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle X-SiT: Inherently Interpretable Surface Vision Transformers for Dementia Diagnosis
Bongratz, Fabian
Wolf, Tom Nuno
Ramon, Jaume Gual
Wachinger, Christian
Graphics
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
Interpretable models are crucial for supporting clinical decision-making, driving advances in their development and application for medical images. However, the nature of 3D volumetric data makes it inherently challenging to visualize and interpret intricate and complex structures like the cerebral cortex. Cortical surface renderings, on the other hand, provide a more accessible and understandable 3D representation of brain anatomy, facilitating visualization and interactive exploration. Motivated by this advantage and the widespread use of surface data for studying neurological disorders, we present the eXplainable Surface Vision Transformer (X-SiT). This is the first inherently interpretable neural network that offers human-understandable predictions based on interpretable cortical features. As part of X-SiT, we introduce a prototypical surface patch decoder for classifying surface patch embeddings, incorporating case-based reasoning with spatially corresponding cortical prototypes. The results demonstrate state-of-the-art performance in detecting Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia while additionally providing informative prototypes that align with known disease patterns and reveal classification errors.
title X-SiT: Inherently Interpretable Surface Vision Transformers for Dementia Diagnosis
topic Graphics
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.20267