Interpretable graph-based models on multimodal biomedical data integration: a technical review and benchmarking

Abstract

Integrating diverse biomedical modalities is essential for robust healthcare insights, and graph-based models are increasingly used to capture complex relational structures. Yet, their clinical translation hinges on interpretability. This review surveys interpretable graph-based models applied to multimodal biomedical data, highlighting dominant trends in disease classification, static graph construction, and post-hoc explainability. We categorize explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) techniques, benchmark SHAP, saliency, sensitivity, and graph masking on Alzheimer’s disease data, and reveal complementary strengths. A development flowchart and future directions, such as dynamic graphs, knowledge integration, and LLM-based explainability, position this work as a key reference for trustworthy biomedical AI.