Visual explanations for polyp detection: How medical doctors assess intrinsic versus extrinsic explanations.

Deep learning has achieved immense success in computer vision and has the potential to help physicians analyze visual content for disease and other abnormalities. However, the current state of deep learning is very much a black box, making medical professionals skeptical about integrating these methods into clinical practice. Several methods have been proposed to shed some light on these black boxes, but there is no consensus on the opinion of medical doctors that will consume these explanations. This paper presents a study asking medical professionals about their opinion of current state-of-the-art explainable artificial intelligence methods when applied to a gastrointestinal disease detection use case. We compare two different categories of explanation methods, intrinsic and extrinsic, and gauge their opinion of the current value of these explanations. The results indicate that intrinsic explanations are preferred and that physicians see value in the explanations. Based on the feedback collected in our study, future explanations of medical deep neural networks can be tailored to the needs and expectations of doctors. Hopefully, this will contribute to solving the issue of black box medical systems and lead to successful implementation of this powerful technology in the clinic.
Competing Interests: I have read the journal’s policy and the authors of this manuscript have the following competing interests: Sravanthi Parasa: Consultant Covidien LP; Medical advisory board of Fujifilms Pål Halvorsen: Board member of Augere Medical. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.
(Copyright: © 2024 Hicks et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)