Interpretable Anomaly Detection

Ask about this topic

Overview

Interpretable anomaly detection studies how to identify unusual observations or events while making clear why they were flagged. Approaches include intrinsically readable rules, prototypes and symbolic models, as well as feature attribution, counterfactuals, and language-based explanations layered onto deep detectors. These methods are used with images, time series, graphs, and tabular data in settings such as industrial monitoring, cybersecurity, healthcare, and scientific discovery, where explanations can guide investigation and response. A central challenge is ensuring that explanations are faithful and useful without reducing detection accuracy, especially as data and operating conditions shift.

Latest papers

CardsList

73 papers10 papers in the last four weeks, down 9% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. Contrastive Learning for Interpretable Anomaly Detection at Collider Experiments

    Aug 13, 2026Haoyi Jia, Sagar Addepalli, Julia GonskiAnomaly DetectionInterpretable Anomaly Detection

    Department of Physics, Stanford University, 450 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305 · SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, 2575 Sand Hill Rd, Menlo Park, CA 94025

  2. Dual Spatial-Temporal Attribution: Architecture-Aligned Post-Hoc Explainability for Recurrent Graph Anomaly Detection

    Aug 12, 2026Iyad Assaad Nekka, Hamida Seba, Khaled Walid Hidouci +1Gradient-Based AttributionInterpretable Anomaly Detection

    LCSI Laboratory, National Higher School of Computer Science (ESI), Algiers, Algeria · Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Lyon, France

  3. JAPE: Joint Anomaly Prediction and Intrinsic Explanation in Multivariate Time Series

    Aug 12, 2026Yian Wei, Yuanyuan Yao, Lu Chen +2Interpretable Anomaly DetectionTime-Series Anomaly Detection

    Zhejiang University · RMIT University · Aalborg University

  4. BREAD: Baseline-Referenced Explanations for Anomaly Diagnosis

    Aug 11, 2026Jiaqi Qiu, Rob Goedhart, Jannis Kurtz +1Feature AttributionExplainable Artificial Intelligence

    Department of Business Analytics, Amsterdam Business School, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

  5. Beyond Hazard Resemblance: Contrastive Event Adjudication for Training-Free Video Anomaly Detection

    Aug 10, 2026Wenti Yin, Xiang Wang, Huaxin Zhang +4Interpretable Anomaly DetectionAnomaly Localization

    Key Laboratory of Image Processing and Intelligent Control, School of Artificial Intelligence and Automation, Huazhong University of Science and Technology · Alibaba Group · The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou)

  6. An Explainable LLM Agent Layer for Open-World Anomaly Detection in Oil Wells

    Aug 4, 2026Lucas Gouveia Omena Lopes, Thales Miranda de Almeida Vieira, Eduardo Toledo de Lima Junior +1Interpretable Anomaly DetectionLLM Agent Evaluation

    Laboratory of Scientific Computing and Visualization, Federal University of Alagoas, Maceio, Alagoas, Brazil · Computing Institute, Federal University of Alagoas, Maceio, Alagoas, Brazil

  7. INCLAIR: Inception-Based Longitudinal Clinical Anomaly Detection with Informed Reasoning

    Jul 29, 2026Maxx Richard Rahman, Wolfgang MaassU-StatisticsInterpretable Anomaly Detection

    German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Germany · Saarland University, Germany

  8. Financial Audit Assistance using Misinformation Detection and Explanation

    Jul 20, 2026Kshitij Madhav Jadhav, Sushodhan Vaishampayan, Manoj Apte +3Interpretable Anomaly DetectionFinancial Fraud Detection

    TCS Research, Pune, 411057, Maharashtra, India. · Work done while working at TCS Research.

  9. IBAD: Interpretable Behavioral Anomaly Detection on Human Mobility Data

    Jun 14, 2026Bita Azarijoo, John Krumm, Cyrus ShahabiInterpretable Anomaly DetectionAnomaly Detection

    University of Southern California Los Angeles, California, USA

  10. CRAFTIIF: Cross-Resolution Analytic Four-Type Interpretable Isolation Forest for Multivariate Time Series Anomaly Detection

    Jun 11, 2026William SmitsIsolation ForestInterpretable Anomaly Detection

    Avathon, Austin, TX, USA

  11. ProtoX-AD: Self-Explainable Time Series Anomaly Detection and Characterization

    Jun 11, 2026Aitor Sánchez-Ferrera, Elisabeth Wetzer, Kristoffer Wickstrøm +2Prototype-Based LearningLLM-Based Time Series Anomaly Detection

    aDepartment of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Donostia, Spain · bDepartment of Physics and Technology, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway

  12. DEM: A Distilled Explanation Model for Interpretable Anomaly Detection in Physiological Sensor Networks

    May 29, 2026Jyotirmoy Singh, Anushka Roy, Shreea Bose +1Interpretable MLInterpretable Anomaly Detection

  13. Tiny but Trusted: Efficient Vision-Language Reasoning for Time-Series Anomaly Detection

    May 28, 2026Xiaona Zhou, Muntasir Wahed, Tianjiao Yu +2LLM-Based Time Series Anomaly DetectionInterpretable Anomaly Detection

    University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign · Sandia National Laboratories

  14. CoReVAD: A Contextual Reasoning Framework for Training-Free Video Anomaly Detection

    May 22, 2026Hyeongmuk Lim, Youngbum HurInterpretable Anomaly DetectionVLM Reasoning

    Department of Industrial Engineering, Inha University, Incheon, Republic of Korea

  15. LATERN: Test-Time Context-Aware Explainable Video Anomaly Detection

    May 14, 2026Mitchell Piehl, Muchao YeInterpretable Anomaly DetectionVLM Reasoning

    The University of Iowa, Iowa City IA 52245, USA

  16. Detect, Localize, and Explain: Interactive Hierarchical Log Anomaly Analytics with LLM Augmentation

    May 9, 2026Lei Ma, Suhani Chaudhary, Ethan Shanbaum +5Online Anomaly DetectionInterpretable Anomaly Detection

    Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA · UC Riverside, USA · University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA

  17. Detecting Time Series Anomalies Like an Expert: A Multi-Agent LLM Framework with Specialized Analyzers

    May 7, 2026Hyeongwon Kang, Jeongseob Kim, Jinwoo Park +1LLM-Based Time Series Anomaly DetectionInterpretable Anomaly Detection

    Department of Industrial and Management Engineering Korea University · Mirae Asset Securities · Department of Industrial Engineering Seoul National University

  18. Adaptive Conformal Anomaly Detection with Time Series Foundation Models for Signal Monitoring

    Apr 22, 2026Natalia Martinez Gil, Fearghal O'Donncha, Wesley M. Gifford +3Interpretable Anomaly DetectionIndustrial Anomaly Detection

    IBM Research

  19. ZSG-IAD: A Multimodal Framework for Zero-Shot Grounded Industrial Anomaly Detection

    Apr 20, 2026Qiuhui Chen, Jiaxiang Song, Shuai Tan +1Multimodal GroundingInterpretable Anomaly Detection

    School of Information Science and Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, China

  20. Conditional Attribution for Root Cause Analysis in Time-Series Anomaly Detection

    Apr 19, 2026Shashank Mishra, Karan Patil, Cedric Schockaert +2Feature AttributionInterpretable Anomaly Detection

    German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Kaiserslautern, Germany · Rheinland-Pfälzische Technische Universität Kaiserslautern-Landau, Germany · Paul Wurth S.A, Luxembourg

  21. On-board Telemetry Monitoring in Autonomous Satellites: Challenges and Opportunities

    Apr 9, 2026Lorenzo Capelli, Leandro de Souza Rosa, Maurizio De Tommasi +8Interpretable Anomaly DetectionFault Detection

    University of Bologna, Italy · Thales Alenia Space Italia, Rome, Italy · European Space Agency (ESA-ESTEC), Netherlands

  22. Latent Anomaly Knowledge Excavation: Unveiling Sparse Sensitive Neurons in Vision-Language Models

    Apr 9, 2026Shaotian Li, Shangze Li, Chuancheng Shi +5Multimodal Anomaly DetectionZero-Shot Anomaly Detection

    Macquarie University · Nanjing University of Science and Technology · The University of Sydney +1

  23. Reasoning-Guided Grounding: Elevating Video Anomaly Detection through Multimodal Large Language Models

    Apr 7, 2026Sakshi Agarwal, Aishik Konwer, Ankit Parag ShahVideo Anomaly DetectionInterpretable Anomaly Detection

    Center of Advanced AI, Accenture.

  24. SPG: Sparse-Projected Guides with Sparse Autoencoders for Zero-Shot Anomaly Detection

    Apr 3, 2026Tomoyasu Nanaumi, Yukino Tsuzuki, Junichi Okubo +2Zero-Shot Anomaly DetectionInterpretable Anomaly Detection

    Yachiyo Engineering Co., Ltd., Japan · Chubu University, Japan

  25. Reasoning-Driven Anomaly Detection and Localization with Image-Level Supervision

    Mar 28, 2026Yizhou Jin, Yuezhu Feng, Jinjin Zhang +3Anomaly LocalizationMultimodal Anomaly Detection

    State Key Laboratory of Virtual Reality Technology and Systems, Beihang University, Beijing, China · Hangzhou Innovation Institute, Beihang University, Hangzhou, China

  26. A Heterogeneous Long-Micro Scale Cascading Architecture for General Aviation Health Management

    Mar 24, 2026Xinhang Chen, Zhihuan Wei, Yang Hu +3Fault DiagnosisPredictive Maintenance

  27. Motion Semantics Guided Normalizing Flow for Privacy-Preserving Video Anomaly Detection

    Mar 23, 2026Yang Liu, Boan Chen, Yuanyuan Meng +5Video Anomaly DetectionInterpretable Anomaly Detection

    Tongji Univ. · SJTU · Shanghai Creative Studies Institute +4

  28. A Modular LLM Framework for Explainable Price Outlier Detection

    Mar 21, 2026Shadi Sartipi, John Wu, Sina Ghotbi +2Anomaly DetectionInterpretable Anomaly Detection

    Amazon.com, Inc.

  29. Adoption and Effectiveness of AI-Based Anomaly Detection for Cross Provider Health Data Exchange

    Mar 19, 2026Cao Tram Anh HoangAnomaly DetectionHealthcare

    School of Information Systems, Queensland University of Technology, Australia

  30. Balancing Performance and Fairness in Explainable AI for Anomaly Detection in Distributed Power Plants Monitoring

    Mar 19, 2026Corneille Niyonkuru, Marcellin Atemkeng, Gabin Maxime Nguegnang +1Semi-Supervised Anomaly DetectionAnomaly Detection

    African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), Kigali, Rwanda. · Department of Mathematics, Rhodes University, PO Box 94, Makhanda, 6140, South Africa. · National Institute for Theoretical and Computational Sciences (NITheCS), Stellenbosch, 7600, South Africa. +2