Improving deep learning performance by using Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) approaches

Abstract In this work we propose a workflow to deal with overlaid images—images with superimposed text and company logos—, which is very common in underwater monitoring videos and surveillance camera footage. It is demonstrated that it is possible to use Explaining Artificial Intelligence to improve deep learning models performance for image classification tasks in general. A deep learning model trained to classify metal surface defect, which previously had a low performance, is then evaluated with Layer-wise relevance propagation—an Explaining Artificial Intelligence technique—to identify problems in a dataset that hinder the training of deep learning models in a wide range of applications. Thereafter, it is possible to remove this unwanted information from the dataset—using different approaches: from cutting part of the images to training a Generative Inpainting neural network model—and retrain the model with the new preprocessed images. This proposed methodology improved F1 score in 20% when compared to the original trained dataset, validating the proposed workflow.