SLUM-i: Semi-supervised Learning for Urban Mapping of Informal Settlements and Data Quality Benchmarking

Rapid urban expansion has fueled the growth of informal settlements in major cities of low- and middle-income countries, with Lahore and Karachi in Pakistan and Mumbai in India serving as prominent examples. However, large-scale mapping of these settlements is severely constrained not only by the scarcity of annotations but by inherent data quality challenges, specifically high spectral ambiguity between formal and informal structures and significant annotation noise. We address this by introducing a benchmark dataset for Lahore, constructed from scratch, along with companion datasets for Karachi and Mumbai, which were derived from verified administrative boundaries, totaling 1,869 $\text{km}^2$ of area. To evaluate the global robustness of our framework, we extend our experiments to five additional established benchmarks, encompassing eight cities across three continents, and provide comprehensive data quality assessments of all datasets. We also propose a new semi-supervised segmentation framework designed to mitigate the class imbalance and feature degradation inherent in standard semi-supervised learning pipelines. Our method integrates a Class-Aware Adaptive Thresholding mechanism that dynamically adjusts confidence thresholds to prevent minority class suppression and a Prototype Bank System that enforces semantic consistency by anchoring predictions to historically learned high-fidelity feature representations. Extensive experiments across a total of eight cities spanning three continents demonstrate that our approach outperforms state-of-the-art semi-supervised baselines. Most notably, our method demonstrates superior domain transfer capability whereby a model trained on only 10% of source labels reaches a 0.461 mIoU on unseen geographies and outperforms the zero-shot generalization of fully supervised models.

SensHRPS: Sensing Comfortable Human-Robot Proxemics and Personal Space With Eye-Tracking

Social robots must adjust to human proxemic norms to ensure user comfort and engagement. While prior research demonstrates that eye-tracking features reliably estimate comfort in human-human interactions, their applicability to interactions with humanoid robots remains unexplored. In this study, we investigate user comfort with the robot "Ameca" across four experimentally controlled distances (0.5 m to 2.0 m) using mobile eye-tracking and subjective reporting (N=19). We evaluate multiple machine learning and deep learning models to estimate comfort based on gaze features. Contrary to previous human-human studies where Transformer models excelled, a Decision Tree classifier achieved the highest performance (F1-score = 0.73), with minimum pupil diameter identified as the most critical predictor. These findings suggest that physiological comfort thresholds in human-robot interaction differ from human-human dynamics and can be effectively modeled using interpretable logic.

PRISM: Diversifying Dataset Distillation by Decoupling Architectural Priors

Dataset distillation (DD) promises compact yet faithful synthetic data, but existing approaches often inherit the inductive bias of a single teacher model. As dataset size increases, this bias drives generation toward overly smooth, homogeneous samples, reducing intra-class diversity and limiting generalization. We present PRISM (PRIors from diverse Source Models), a framework that disentangles architectural priors during synthesis. PRISM decouples the logit-matching and regularization objectives, supervising them with different teacher architectures: a primary model for logits and a stochastic subset for batch-normalization (BN) alignment. On ImageNet-1K, PRISM consistently and reproducibly outperforms single-teacher methods (e.g., SRe2L) and recent multi-teacher variants (e.g., G-VBSM) at low- and mid-IPC regimes. The generated data also show significantly richer intra-class diversity, as reflected by a notable drop in cosine similarity between features. We further analyze teacher selection strategies (pre- vs. intra-distillation) and introduce a scalable cross-class batch formation scheme for fast parallel synthesis. Code will be released after the review period.

Dynamic Weight Adjustment for Knowledge Distillation: Leveraging Vision Transformer for High-Accuracy Lung Cancer Detection and Real-Time Deployment

This paper presents the FuzzyDistillViT-MobileNet model, a novel approach for lung cancer (LC) classification, leveraging dynamic fuzzy logic-driven knowledge distillation (KD) to address uncertainty and complexity in disease diagnosis. Unlike traditional models that rely on static KD with fixed weights, our method dynamically adjusts the distillation weight using fuzzy logic, enabling the student model to focus on high-confidence regions while reducing attention to ambiguous areas. This dynamic adjustment improves the model ability to handle varying uncertainty levels across different regions of LC images. We employ the Vision Transformer (ViT-B32) as the instructor model, which effectively transfers knowledge to the student model, MobileNet, enhancing the student generalization capabilities. The training process is further optimized using a dynamic wait adjustment mechanism that adapts the training procedure for improved convergence and performance. To enhance image quality, we introduce pixel-level image fusion improvement techniques such as Gamma correction and Histogram Equalization. The processed images (Pix1 and Pix2) are fused using a wavelet-based fusion method to improve image resolution and feature preservation. This fusion method uses the wavedec2 function to standardize images to a 224x224 resolution, decompose them into multi-scale frequency components, and recursively average coefficients at each level for better feature representation. To address computational efficiency, Genetic Algorithm (GA) is used to select the most suitable pre-trained student model from a pool of 12 candidates, balancing model performance with computational cost. The model is evaluated on two datasets, including LC25000 histopathological images (99.16% accuracy) and IQOTH/NCCD CT-scan images (99.54% accuracy), demonstrating robustness across different imaging domains.

LD-ViCE: Latent Diffusion Model for Video Counterfactual Explanations

Video-based AI systems are increasingly adopted in safety-critical domains such as autonomous driving and healthcare. However, interpreting their decisions remains challenging due to the inherent spatiotemporal complexity of video data and the opacity of deep learning models. Existing explanation techniques often suffer from limited temporal coherence, insufficient robustness, and a lack of actionable causal insights. Current counterfactual explanation methods typically do not incorporate guidance from the target model, reducing semantic fidelity and practical utility. We introduce Latent Diffusion for Video Counterfactual Explanations (LD-ViCE), a novel framework designed to explain the behavior of video-based AI models. Compared to previous approaches, LD-ViCE reduces the computational costs of generating explanations by operating in latent space using a state-of-the-art diffusion model, while producing realistic and interpretable counterfactuals through an additional refinement step. Our experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of LD-ViCE across three diverse video datasets, including EchoNet-Dynamic (cardiac ultrasound), FERV39k (facial expression), and Something-Something V2 (action recognition). LD-ViCE outperforms a recent state-of-the-art method, achieving an increase in R2 score of up to 68% while reducing inference time by half. Qualitative analysis confirms that LD-ViCE generates semantically meaningful and temporally coherent explanations, offering valuable insights into the target model behavior. LD-ViCE represents a valuable step toward the trustworthy deployment of AI in safety-critical domains.

FloraSyntropy-Net: Scalable Deep Learning with Novel FloraSyntropy Archive for Large-Scale Plant Disease Diagnosis

Early diagnosis of plant diseases is critical for global food safety, yet most AI solutions lack the generalization required for real-world agricultural diversity. These models are typically constrained to specific species, failing to perform accurately across the broad spectrum of cultivated plants. To address this gap, we first introduce the FloraSyntropy Archive, a large-scale dataset of 178,922 images across 35 plant species, annotated with 97 distinct disease classes. We establish a benchmark by evaluating numerous existing models on this archive, revealing a significant performance gap. We then propose FloraSyntropy-Net, a novel federated learning framework (FL) that integrates a Memetic Algorithm (MAO) for optimal base model selection (DenseNet201), a novel Deep Block for enhanced feature representation, and a client-cloning strategy for scalable, privacy-preserving training. FloraSyntropy-Net achieves a state-of-the-art accuracy of 96.38% on the FloraSyntropy benchmark. Crucially, to validate its generalization capability, we test the model on the unrelated multiclass Pest dataset, where it demonstrates exceptional adaptability, achieving 99.84% accuracy. This work provides not only a valuable new resource but also a robust and highly generalizable framework that advances the field towards practical, large-scale agricultural AI applications.

Can Multitask Learning Enhance Model Explainability?

Remote sensing provides satellite data in diverse types and formats. The usage of multimodal learning networks exploits this diversity to improve model performance, except that the complexity of such networks comes at the expense of their interpretability. In this study, we explore how modalities can be leveraged through multitask learning to intrinsically explain model behavior. In particular, instead of additional inputs, we use certain modalities as additional targets to be predicted along with the main task. The success of this approach relies on the rich information content of satellite data, which remains as input modalities. We show how this modeling context provides numerous benefits: (1) in case of data scarcity, the additional modalities do not need to be collected for model inference at deployment, (2) the model performance remains comparable to the multimodal baseline performance, and in some cases achieves better scores, (3) prediction errors in the main task can be explained via the model behavior in the auxiliary task(s). We demonstrate the efficiency of our approach on three datasets, including segmentation, classification, and regression tasks. Code available at git.opendfki.de/hiba.najjar/mtl_explainability/.

Intrinsic Explainability of Multimodal Learning for Crop Yield Prediction

Multimodal learning enables various machine learning tasks to benefit from diverse data sources, effectively mimicking the interplay of different factors in real-world applications, particularly in agriculture. While the heterogeneous nature of involved data modalities may necessitate the design of complex architectures, the model interpretability is often overlooked. In this study, we leverage the intrinsic explainability of Transformer-based models to explain multimodal learning networks, focusing on the task of crop yield prediction at the subfield level. The large datasets used cover various crops, regions, and years, and include four different input modalities: multispectral satellite and weather time series, terrain elevation maps and soil properties. Based on the self-attention mechanism, we estimate feature attributions using two methods, namely the Attention Rollout (AR) and Generic Attention (GA), and evaluate their performance against Shapley-based model-agnostic estimations, Shapley Value Sampling (SVS). Additionally, we propose the Weighted Modality Activation (WMA) method to assess modality attributions and compare it with SVS attributions. Our findings indicate that Transformer-based models outperform other architectures, specifically convolutional and recurrent networks, achieving R2 scores that are higher by 0.10 and 0.04 at the subfield and field levels, respectively. AR is shown to provide more robust and reliable temporal attributions, as confirmed through qualitative and quantitative evaluation, compared to GA and SVS values. Information about crop phenology stages was leveraged to interpret the explanation results in the light of established agronomic knowledge. Furthermore, modality attributions revealed varying patterns across the two methods compared.[...]

DocVCE: Diffusion-based Visual Counterfactual Explanations for Document Image Classification

As black-box AI-driven decision-making systems become increasingly widespread in modern document processing workflows, improving their transparency and reliability has become critical, especially in high-stakes applications where biases or spurious correlations in decision-making could lead to serious consequences. One vital component often found in such document processing workflows is document image classification, which, despite its widespread use, remains difficult to explain. While some recent works have attempted to explain the decisions of document image classification models through feature-importance maps, these maps are often difficult to interpret and fail to provide insights into the global features learned by the model. In this paper, we aim to bridge this research gap by introducing generative document counterfactuals that provide meaningful insights into the model's decision-making through actionable explanations. In particular, we propose DocVCE, a novel approach that leverages latent diffusion models in combination with classifier guidance to first generate plausible in-distribution visual counterfactual explanations, and then performs hierarchical patch-wise refinement to search for a refined counterfactual that is closest to the target factual image. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach through a rigorous qualitative and quantitative assessment on 3 different document classification datasets -- RVL-CDIP, Tobacco3482, and DocLayNet -- and 3 different models -- ResNet, ConvNeXt, and DiT -- using well-established evaluation criteria such as validity, closeness, and realism. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first work to explore generative counterfactual explanations in document image analysis.

FOLC-Net: A Federated-Optimized Lightweight Architecture for Enhanced MRI Disease Diagnosis across Axial, Coronal, and Sagittal Views

The framework is designed to improve performance in the analysis of combined as well as single anatomical perspectives for MRI disease diagnosis. It specifically addresses the performance degradation observed in state-of-the-art (SOTA) models, particularly when processing axial, coronal, and sagittal anatomical planes. The paper introduces the FOLC-Net framework, which incorporates a novel federated-optimized lightweight architecture with approximately 1.217 million parameters and a storage requirement of only 0.9 MB. FOLC-Net integrates Manta-ray foraging optimization (MRFO) mechanisms for efficient model structure generation, global model cloning for scalable training, and ConvNeXt for enhanced client adaptability. The model was evaluated on combined multi-view data as well as individual views, such as axial, coronal, and sagittal, to assess its robustness in various medical imaging scenarios. Moreover, FOLC-Net tests a ShallowFed model on different data to evaluate its ability to generalize beyond the training dataset. The results show that FOLC-Net outperforms existing models, particularly in the challenging sagittal view. For instance, FOLC-Net achieved an accuracy of 92.44% on the sagittal view, significantly higher than the 88.37% accuracy of study method (DL + Residual Learning) and 88.95% of DL models. Additionally, FOLC-Net demonstrated improved accuracy across all individual views, providing a more reliable and robust solution for medical image analysis in decentralized environments. FOLC-Net addresses the limitations of existing SOTA models by providing a framework that ensures better adaptability to individual views while maintaining strong performance in multi-view settings. The incorporation of MRFO, global model cloning, and ConvNeXt ensures that FOLC-Net performs better in real-world medical applications.