Högskolan i Skövde

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Assessing the Stability of Permutation Feature Importance in Neural Networks Trained on scRNA-Seq Data
University of Skövde, School of Bioscience.
2025 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (One Year)), 20 credits / 30 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

Interpretable machine learning (IML) is crucial in biomedical research, where understanding how models make decisions is as important as their accuracy. This study examines the stability of Permutation Feature Importance (PFI), a model-agnostic interpretability method, when applied to neural networks trained on high-dimensional single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data. Using data from healthy and hydrosalpinx-affected human fallopian tube cells, five neural networks were trained with varying hyperparameters and input feature sets. All models achieved similar classification accuracy, allowing a fair comparison of feature importance rankings. PFI was applied to assess the contribution of each gene to model predictions, and stability was evaluated across three levels: different models, repeated runs with varying random seeds, and datasets with different numbers of input genes. Kendall’s coefficient of concordance and the Jaccard index were used to measure consistency in feature rankings. Results showed high agreement in repeated PFI runs on the same model and moderate consistency across models with different hyperparameters, indicating that PFI produces stable and interpretable outputs when the input data and model architecture remain unchanged. However, substantial variation appeared when input dimensionality was reduced, showing that PFI rankings are sensitive to the number of input features. These findings emphasize that while PFI is reliable for comparing similar models trained on the same data, its interpretability can degrade in low-dimensional or filtered feature spaces. This insight supports the development of more dependable explainable AI tools for high-dimensional biological data, particularly in genomics and precision medicine.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2025. , p. 47
National Category
Bioinformatics (Computational Biology)
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:his:diva-25410OAI: oai:DiVA.org:his-25410DiVA, id: diva2:1980247
Subject / course
Bioinformatics
Educational program
Bioinformatics - Master’s Programme
Supervisors
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Available from: 2025-07-01 Created: 2025-07-01 Last updated: 2025-07-01Bibliographically approved

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Bioinformatics (Computational Biology)

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3637383940414239 of 197
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

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Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • apa-cv
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf