aiqbench analysis
This research introduces "neural echoes," a framework bridging classical signal processing concepts like impulse responses with modern explainable AI for neural networks. By providing local, space-adaptive kernels applicable to various architectures including transformers and non-differentiable models, the study offers new tools for visualizing learned dynamics without relying on standard Jacobian-based methods. The work clarifies how specific networks, such as DnCNN, replicate classical filtering behaviors through their internal weights.
The Neural Echo: A Signal Processing Perspective for Understanding Neural Networks
arXiv:2608.04864v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We introduce the neural echo as a tool for understanding the behavior of neural networks. It generalizes the model-based concepts of impulse responses, diffusion echoes, and filter echoes to learning-based methods. It provides local, space-adaptive impulse responses and filter kernels for a neural network, its so-called echoes. These echoes depend on the input image and can be visualized to understand the learned dynamics of the network via an affine mapping. Neural echoes build a bridge from classical signal processing to modern explainable AI. They are very general and can be applied to both image-to-image and classification networks, with convolutional or fully connected structure, of feedforward or recurrent type, including modern transformer networks. Network differentiability is not required. In the differentiable case, neural echoes comprise concepts based on the network Jacobian, such as saliency maps and the analysis of adversarial perturbations, as special instances. As a simple blueprint to explain our framework, we derive neural echoes for the denoising convolutional neural network (DnCNN). Our experiments suggest that this network weights pixels based on their spatial and gray value distances. This not only clarifies its behavior, but also shows that it can reproduce key concepts of classical model-based denoisers such as bilateral filtering.
Abstract:We introduce the neural echo as a tool for understanding the behavior of neural networks. It generalizes the model-based concepts of impulse responses, diffusion echoes, and filter echoes to learning-based methods. It provides local, space-adaptive impulse responses and filter kernels for a neural network, its so-called echoes. These echoes depend on the input image and can be visualized to understand the learned dynamics of the network via an affine mapping. Neural echoes build a bridge from classical signal processing to modern explainable AI. They are very general and can be applied to both image-to-image and classification networks, with convolutional or fully connected structure, of feedforward or recurrent type, including modern transformer networks. Network differentiability is not required. In the differentiable case, neural echoes comprise concepts based on the network Jacobian, such as saliency maps and the analysis of adversarial perturbations, as special instances. As a simple blueprint to explain our framework, we derive neural echoes for the denoising convolutional neural network (DnCNN). Our experiments suggest that this network weights pixels based on their spatial and gray value distances. This not only clarifies its behavior, but also shows that it can reproduce key concepts of classical model-based denoisers such as bilateral filtering.
Signal Processing (eess.SP); Machine Learning (cs.LG)
arXiv:2608.04864 [eess.SP]
(or arXiv:2608.04864v1 [eess.SP] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.04864 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
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