{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/isnet-costless-and-implicit-image","title":"Improving deep neural network generalization and robustness to background bias via layer-wise relevance propagation optimization","arxiv_id":"2202.00232","date":"2022-02-01","proceeding":"Nature Communications 2024 1","authors":["Pedro R. A. S. Bassi","Sergio S. J. Dertkigil","Andrea Cavalli"],"abstract":"Features in images' backgrounds can spuriously correlate with the images' classes, representing background bias. They can influence the classifier's decisions, causing shortcut learning (Clever Hans effect). The phenomenon generates deep neural networks (DNNs) that perform well on standard evaluation datasets but generalize poorly to real-world data. Layer-wise Relevance Propagation (LRP) explains DNNs' decisions. Here, we show that the optimization of LRP heatmaps can minimize the background bias influence on deep classifiers, hindering shortcut learning. By not increasing run-time computational cost, the approach is light and fast. Furthermore, it applies to virtually any classification architecture. After injecting synthetic bias in images' backgrounds, we compared our approach (dubbed ISNet) to eight state-of-the-art DNNs, quantitatively demonstrating its superior robustness to background bias. Mixed datasets are common for COVID-19 and tuberculosis classification with chest X-rays, fostering background bias. By focusing on the lungs, the ISNet reduced shortcut learning. Thus, its generalization performance on external (out-of-distribution) test databases significantly surpassed all implemented benchmark models.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.00232v7","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2202.00232v7.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"isnet-costless-and-implicit-image","repo_url":"https://github.com/PedroRASB/ISNet","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"pytorch","reach":null}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"classification-1","task_name":"Classification"},{"task_slug":"semantic-segmentation","task_name":"Semantic Segmentation"}],"methods":[{"method_slug":"concatenated-skip-connection","method_name":"Concatenated Skip Connection"},{"method_slug":"convolution","method_name":"Convolution"},{"method_slug":"max-pooling","method_name":"Max Pooling"},{"method_slug":"relu","method_name":"ReLU"},{"method_slug":"u-net","method_name":"U-Net"}],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2202.00232","mcp":{"get_harvested_code_for_paper":{"arxiv_id":"2202.00232"}},"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers","read_at":"2026-09-24T18:15:14+00:00","read_at_is":"when the build read Syntology's graph, not when any sample ran","claim":"Per-sample execution status on synthesized fixtures; not a correctness claim about the paper. Samples come from repositories linked to the paper, official or community; repo_kind says which.","repos":[{"provenance":"external:paperswithcode_snapshot_2025-07-28","url":"https://github.com/PedroRASB/ISNet","reach":null}],"summary":{"ran_honours":1},"by_repo_kind":{"official":{"samples":1,"ran":1,"repositories":1}},"repo_kind_vocabulary":{"official":"The archive marks this repository official for the paper","named_in_paper":"The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official","listed":"In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper","found_in_text":"Syntology found this repository in the paper's own text; whether it is the authors' implementation is not asserted","community":"Not in the archive's code links for this paper; a community repository Syntology harvested"},"n_pointer_only_for_licence":1,"samples":[{"code_sha256_prefix":"1d7135fa6159e86d","entry":"InterpretArgs","repo":"PedroRASB/ISNet","repo_kind":"official","path":"code/RunISNet.py","file_url":"https://github.com/PedroRASB/ISNet/blob/HEAD/code/RunISNet.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran_honours","verification_level":1,"contract_check":"HONOURS","metamorphic_tier":"well_formed","behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"BSD-3-Clause-Clear","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"1d7135fa6159e86d"}}]},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}