aiqbench analysis
This research evaluates the viability of lens-less digital in-line holographic microscopy as a cost-effective alternative to brightfield microscopy for automated veterinary pollen analysis. The study demonstrates that while reconstructed holograms significantly improve detection and classification performance over raw inputs, they introduce model brittleness that requires specific attribution methods to maintain reliable explanations. This work advances the intersection of computer vision and optical physics by establishing protocols for assessing model faithfulness under modality changes in low-cost imaging setups.
Reconstructed holograms and explanation-aware evaluation for low-cost computational pollen analysis in veterinary cytology
arXiv:2609.23017v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Automated pollen analysis supports veterinary cytology, but brightfield microscopy is costlier and more complex than lens-less digital in-line holographic microscopy. We evaluate whether reconstructed holograms can narrow this gap and whether model explanations remain reliable under modality change. Six pollen species were imaged by brightfield and holographic microscopy. Raw, single back-propagation and iterative phase retrieval holograms were evaluated with YOLOv26s detection and MobileNetV4 classification after anchor-based annotation transfer. Six attribution methods were assessed for spatial grounding and faithfulness with the Attribution Health Inspection and Repair (AHIR) protocol, which tests model brittleness under weak noise and corrects attribution-map granularity when needed. Brightfield achieved 0.6890 mAP50-95 (0.8865 mAP50) for detection and 0.9687 macro-F1 (0.9705 accuracy) for classification. Reconstructed holograms narrowed the gap with a task-dependent split: p-type was strongest for detection at 0.5324 mAP50-95 (0.8229 mAP50), while r-type was strongest for classification at 0.7695 macro-F1 (0.7866 accuracy), both far above raw-hologram baselines. Activation-based explanations localized strongly on grains, and region-based methods retained ~60 to ~80% of faithfulness under holography. The holographic detector was highly brittle to weak perturbations, saturating deletion-based evaluation while insertion remained informative. Pixel-level gradient explanations approached random floor, yet spatial smoothing restored p-type gradient faithfulness from 0.05 to 0.51. For holographic classification, perturbation-based explanations remained faithful while gradient-based methods fell below random floor. Reconstruction improves low-cost holographic pollen analysis, while AHIR distinguishes genuine attribution failure from artifacts caused by model brittleness and map granularity.
Abstract:Automated pollen analysis supports veterinary cytology, but brightfield microscopy is costlier and more complex than lens-less digital in-line holographic microscopy. We evaluate whether reconstructed holograms can narrow this gap and whether model explanations remain reliable under modality change. Six pollen species were imaged by brightfield and holographic microscopy. Raw, single back-propagation and iterative phase retrieval holograms were evaluated with YOLOv26s detection and MobileNetV4 classification after anchor-based annotation transfer. Six attribution methods were assessed for spatial grounding and faithfulness with the Attribution Health Inspection and Repair (AHIR) protocol, which tests model brittleness under weak noise and corrects attribution-map granularity when needed. Brightfield achieved 0.6890 mAP50-95 (0.8865 mAP50) for detection and 0.9687 macro-F1 (0.9705 accuracy) for classification. Reconstructed holograms narrowed the gap with a task-dependent split: p-type was strongest for detection at 0.5324 mAP50-95 (0.8229 mAP50), while r-type was strongest for classification at 0.7695 macro-F1 (0.7866 accuracy), both far above raw-hologram baselines. Activation-based explanations localized strongly on grains, and region-based methods retained ~60 to ~80% of faithfulness under holography. The holographic detector was highly brittle to weak perturbations, saturating deletion-based evaluation while insertion remained informative. Pixel-level gradient explanations approached random floor, yet spatial smoothing restored p-type gradient faithfulness from 0.05 to 0.51. For holographic classification, perturbation-based explanations remained faithful while gradient-based methods fell below random floor. Reconstruction improves low-cost holographic pollen analysis, while AHIR distinguishes genuine attribution failure from artifacts caused by model brittleness and map granularity.
25 pages, 17 figures, 20 tables. Supplementary material included. Submitted to a journal for peer review
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV); Machine Learning (cs.LG); Quantitative Methods (q-bio.QM)
I.2.6; I.2.10; I.4.5; I.4.6; I.4.8; I.4.9; I.5.4; J.3
arXiv:2609.23017 [cs.CV]
(or arXiv:2609.23017v1 [cs.CV] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.23017 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
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Full text under the publisher's open licence · 362 words
