Muhammad Siddique Ahmed Khan

Qi Huang, Emanuele Mezzi, Osman Mutlu et al.

We introduce a novel metric for measuring semantic continuity in Explainable AI methods and machine learning models. We posit that for models to be truly interpretable and trustworthy, similar inputs should yield similar explanations, reflecting a consistent semantic understanding. By leveraging XAI techniques, we assess semantic continuity in the task of image recognition. We conduct experiments to observe how incremental changes in input affect the explanations provided by different XAI methods. Through this approach, we aim to evaluate the models' capability to generalize and abstract semantic concepts accurately and to evaluate different XAI methods in correctly capturing the model behaviour. This paper contributes to the broader discourse on AI interpretability by proposing a quantitative measure for semantic continuity for XAI methods, offering insights into the models' and explainers' internal reasoning processes, and promoting more reliable and transparent AI systems.

Samiha Afaf Neha, Abir Ahammed Bhuiyan, Md. Ishrak Khan

\textbf{Introduction:} Accurate prediction of Phage Virion Proteins (PVP) is essential for genomic studies due to their crucial role as structural elements in bacteriophages. Computational tools, particularly machine learning, have emerged for annotating phage protein sequences from high-throughput sequencing. However, effective annotation requires specialized sequence encodings. Our paper introduces ProteoKnight, a new image-based encoding method that addresses spatial constraints in existing techniques, yielding competitive performance in PVP classification using pre-trained convolutional neural networks. Additionally, our study evaluates prediction uncertainty in binary PVP classification through Monte Carlo Dropout (MCD). \textbf{Methods:} ProteoKnight adapts the classical DNA-Walk algorithm for protein sequences, incorporating pixel colors and adjusting walk distances to capture intricate protein features. Encoded sequences were classified using multiple pre-trained CNNs. Variance and entropy measures assessed prediction uncertainty across proteins of various classes and lengths. \textbf{Results:} Our experiments achieved 90.8% accuracy in binary classification, comparable to state-of-the-art methods. Multi-class classification accuracy remains suboptimal. Our uncertainty analysis unveils variability in prediction confidence influenced by protein class and sequence length. \textbf{Conclusions:} Our study surpasses frequency chaos game representation (FCGR) by introducing novel image encoding that mitigates spatial information loss limitations. Our classification technique yields accurate and robust PVP predictions while identifying low-confidence predictions.