Fig. 3: Gradient visualizations of predictions of three vascular-related diseases.

This figure shows saliency maps of predictive gradients for three vascular-related diseases, highlighting clinically relevant retinal regions. a Stroke. b MI. c CKD. The first image presents a compiled saliency map that encompasses all patients in the subgroup. In this map, the highest value of each pixel from the saliency maps of individual patients is captured, emphasizing the distribution of retinal microvascular areas that the model considers crucial for this particular disease. The second image shows a differential map of the compiled saliency maps for three diseases. It is a standardized representation of the first image, where brighter pixels denote that the corresponding region is more associated with the specific disease compared to the other two. The subsequent four images (3rd to 6th) exhibit saliency maps derived from fundus images of four randomly chosen patients who have the corresponding vascular-related disease.