HayCAMJ: A new method to uncover the importance of main filter for small objects in explainable artificial intelligence

Abstract

Visual XAI methods enable experts to reveal importance maps highlighting intended classes over input images. This research paper presents a novel approach to visual explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) for object detection in deep learning models. The study investigates the effectiveness of activation maps generated by five different methods, namely GradCAM, GradCAM++, EigenCAM, HayCAM, and a newly proposed method called "HayCAMJ", in detecting objects within images. The experiments were conducted on two datasets (Pascal VOC 2007 and Pascal VOC 2012) and three models (ResNet18, ResNet34, and MobileNet). Zero padding was applied to resize and center the objects due to the large objects in the images. The results show that HayCAMJ performs better than other XAI techniques in detecting small objects. This finding suggests that HayCAMJ has the potential to become a promising new approach for object detection in deep classification models. © The Author(s) 2024.