Interpretability has made significant strides in recent years, enabling the formerly black-box models to reach new levels of transparency. These kinds of models can be particularly useful to broaden the applicability of machine learning-based systems to domains where—apart from the predictions—appropriate justifications are also required (e.g., forensics and medical image analysis). In this context, techniques that focus on visual explanations are of particular interest here, due to their ability to directly portray the reasons that support a given prediction. Therefore, in this document, we focus on presenting the core principles of interpretability and describing the main methods that deliver visual cues (including one that we designed for periocular recognition in particular). Based on these intuitions, the experiments performed show explanations that attempt to highlight the most important periocular components towards a non-match decision. Then, some particularly challenging scenarios are presented to naturally sustain our conclusions and thoughts regarding future directions.
A Short Survey on Machine Learning Explainability: An Application to Periocular Recognition