ConsensusXAI: A framework to examine class-wise agreement in medical imaging

  • Abbas Haider
  • , David Wright
  • , Ruth Hogg
  • , Hui Wang
  • , Tunde Peto
  • , Richard Gault

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperpeer-review

Abstract

Explainable AI (XAI) is essential for trust and transparency in deep learning, especially in medical imaging.
Existing local explanation methods provide per-instance insights but fail to show whether similar explanations
hold across samples of the same class. This limits global interpretability and demands time-consuming manual
review by clinicians to trust models in practice. We introduce the Consensus Alignment Score (CAS), a
novel metric that quantifies consistency of explanations at the class level. We also present ConsensusXAI, an
open-source, model- and method-agnostic framework that evaluates explanation agreement quantitatively (via
CAS) and qualitatively (through consensus heatmaps) per class. Unlike prior benchmarks, ConsensusXAI uses
a latent-space clustering approach, Latent Consensus, to identify dominant explanation patterns, exposing
biases and inconsistencies towards certain classes. Evaluated across two different medical imaging modalities for
both correct and incorrect predictions on two different backbones, our method consistently reveals meaningful
class-level insights, outperforming traditional consensus method i.e. SSIM, and enabling faster, more confident
clinical adoption of AI models.
Original languageEnglish
Number of pages12
Publication statusAccepted/In press - 11 Nov 2025
EventIEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision 2026 - JW Marriott Starpass, Tucson, United States
Duration: 6 Mar 202610 Mar 2026
https://wacv.thecvf.com/

Conference

ConferenceIEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision 2026
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityTucson
Period6/03/2610/03/26
Internet address

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