Prototype-based neural networks are hailed as interpretable-by-design architectures. Recently, Abductive Latent Explanations (ALE) were introduced to provide formal, mathematically guaranteed explanations that leverage the intrinsic structure of these networks to ensure both predictive safety and human readability. ALEs rely on computing tight bounds on latent space distances to produce formal explanations. However, existing ALE formulations are rigidly confined to Euclidean latent spaces. This leaves a critical gap: modern state-of-the-art architectures increasingly rely on non-Euclidean representations - such as spherical metrics, Gaussian densities, and dimensional projections - rendering current formal explanation methods incompatible. In this work, we generalize the ALE framework to support non-Euclidean prototype architectures. For each geometric variant, we systematically derive how to either map the architecture to existing bounds or construct novel, architecture-specific bounding algorithms. We validate our theoretical constructions by computing subset-minimal formal explanations on fully trained image classifiers. By unifying these diverse models under a single formal framework, we enable the first rigorous, cross-architecture comparison of their interpretability.
Figures & tables
Name
Similarity
Gaussian
Pooling
Reference
ProtoPNet
Euclidean
×
Max
[ 7 ]
ProtoPool
Euclidean
×
Focal
[ 37 ]
TesNet
Cosine
×
Max
[ 43 ]
Def. ProtoPNet
Cosine
×
Max
[ 11 ]
PIP-Net
Cosine ⋆
×
Max
[ 28 ]
ProtoGMM
Euclidean
✓
Max
[ 27 ]
Table 1: Evolution of prototype-part network modules. Inspired by Table 1 of [ 19 ] .
Figure 1: Spherical Cap Intersection Approximation. The blue spherical cap is defined by p1 as its center and its radius by the distance to zl . Similarly, the orange spherical cap is defined by p2 as its center and its radius by the distance to zl . Their intersection is approximated by the dashed red spherical with center pint , who also has its radius equal to its distance to zl . With that intersection computed, we have tighter bounds on the angular distance between an unknown prototype pk and the latent patch z .
Figure 2: Gaussian Hypersphere Intersection Approximation. Each prototype pj is defined by its anchor μj and its variance σj (represented as a layer of the same color). In this figure, zl is at distance 2 to μ1 and distance 3 to μ2 . The red dotted circle encompasses the hypersphere that approximates the intersection between the two hyperspheres in the Euclidean metric space.
Architecture
Acc. (%)
ALE
Abs. Size
Rel. Size (%)
Time (s)
ProtoPNet
82.8
Top- k
199±254
19.5±24.9
0.327±0.406
TI
5273±6075
32.3±37.2
60.434±61.289
HIA
675±361
4.1±2.2
11.781±13.676
PIP-Net
80.5
Top- k
135±29
17.6±3.8
1.229±1.413
Sparse
103±55
13.5±7.2
0.075±0.089
Simplex
250±103
0.2±0.1
0.286±0.069
Table 2: Comparison of explanation size and computing time on Oxford Flowers 102.
Architecture
Acc. (%)
ALE
Abs. Size
Rel. Size (%)
Time (s)
ProtoPNet
89.3
Top- k
99±72
26.6±19.4
0.101±0.06
TI
7869±6537
43.4±36.1
105.805±83.69
HIA
733±204
4.0±1.1
3.098±1.49
PIP-Net
88.7
Top- k
131±13
17.0±1.7
1.586±0.231
Sparse
30±16
4.0±2.0
0.076±0.038
Simplex
190±30
0.1±0.0
0.252±0.040
Table 3: Comparison of explanation size and computing time on Oxford IIIT Pets.
Architecture
Acc. (%)
ALE
Abs. Size
Rel. Size (%)
Time (s)
ProtoPNet
83.9
Top- k
314±218
15.7±10.9
0.997±0.732
TI
1950±5860
2.0±6.0
213.616±666.449
HIA
1349±3769
1.4±3.8
2446.927±11363.445
ProtoPool
82.5
Top- k
67±44
30.5±20.3
0.195±0.111
TI
893±522
45.5±26.6
7.502±3.505
HIA
272±315
13.8±16.1
7.666±12.973
Table 4: Comparison of explanation size and computing time on CUB200.