{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,24]],"date-time":"2025-09-24T00:14:59Z","timestamp":1758672899487,"version":"3.44.0"},"publisher-location":"California","reference-count":0,"publisher":"International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization","content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":[],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2025,9]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>The concept bottleneck model (CBM), as a technique improving interpretability via linking predictions to human-understandable concepts, makes high-risk and life-critical medical image classification credible. Typically, existing CBM methods associate the final layer of visual encoders with concepts to explain the model\u2019s predictions.  However, we empirically discover the phenomenon of concept preference variation, that is, the concepts are preferably associated with the features at different layers than those only at the final layer; yet a blind last-layer-based association neglects such a preference variation and thus weakens the accurate correspondences between features and concepts, impairing model interpretability. To address this issue, we propose a novel Multi-layer Visual Preference-enhanced Concept Bottleneck Model (MVP-CBM), which comprises two key novel modules: (1) intra-layer concept preference modeling, which captures the preferred association of different concepts with features at various visual layers, and (2) multi-layer concept sparse activation fusion, which sparsely aggregates concept activations from multiple layers to enhance performance. Thus, by explicitly modeling concept preferences, MVP-CBM can comprehensively leverage multi-layer visual information to provide a more nuanced and accurate explanation of model decisions. Extensive experiments on several public medical classification benchmarks demonstrate that MVP-CBM achieves state-of-the-art accuracy and interoperability, verifying its superiority. Code is available at https:\/\/github.com\/wcj6\/MVP-CBM.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.24963\/ijcai.2025\/60","type":"proceedings-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,19]],"date-time":"2025-09-19T08:10:40Z","timestamp":1758269440000},"page":"529-537","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["MVP-CBM: Multi-layer Visual Preference-enhanced Concept Bottleneck Model for Explainable Medical Image Classification"],"prefix":"10.24963","author":[{"given":"Chunjiang","family":"Wang","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Biomedical Engineering, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, P.R. China"},{"name":"Suzhou Institute for Advanced Research, University of Science and Technology of China, Suzhou, Jiangsu, 215123, P.R. China"}]},{"given":"Kun","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Biomedical Engineering, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, P.R. China"},{"name":"Suzhou Institute for Advanced Research, University of Science and Technology of China, Suzhou, Jiangsu, 215123, P.R. China"}]},{"given":"Yandong","family":"Liu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Biomedical Engineering, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, P.R. China"},{"name":"Suzhou Institute for Advanced Research, University of Science and Technology of China, Suzhou, Jiangsu, 215123, P.R. China"}]},{"given":"Zhiyang","family":"He","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Medical Business Department, iFlytek Co., Ltd, Hefei, 230088, China"}]},{"given":"Xiaodong","family":"Tao","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Medical Business Department, iFlytek Co., Ltd, Hefei, 230088, China"}]},{"given":"S. Kevin","family":"Zhou","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Biomedical Engineering, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, P.R. China"},{"name":"Suzhou Institute for Advanced Research, University of Science and Technology of China, Suzhou, Jiangsu, 215123, P.R. China"},{"name":"Jiangsu Provincial Key Laboratory of Multimodal Digital Twin Technology, Suzhou, Jiangsu, 215123, P.R. China"},{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Precision and Intelligent Chemistry, USTC"}]}],"member":"10584","event":{"number":"34","sponsor":["International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization (IJCAI)"],"acronym":"IJCAI-2025","name":"Thirty-Fourth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence {IJCAI-25}","start":{"date-parts":[[2025,8,16]]},"theme":"Artificial Intelligence","location":"Montreal, Canada","end":{"date-parts":[[2025,8,22]]}},"container-title":["Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"],"original-title":[],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,23]],"date-time":"2025-09-23T11:32:47Z","timestamp":1758627167000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.ijcai.org\/proceedings\/2025\/60"}},"subtitle":[],"proceedings-subject":"Artificial Intelligence Research Articles","short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2025,9]]},"references-count":0,"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.24963\/ijcai.2025\/60","relation":{},"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2025,9]]}}}