ChannelExplorer: Exploring Class Separability Through Activation Channel Visualization

ChannelExplorer

📅 July 1, 2026✍️ Md. Rahat-Uz-Zaman, Bei Wang, Paul Rosen📚 IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 32(7), 5442–5456🎯 article

DOI

arXiv

@article{rahat2026channelexplorer,
  author  = {Md Rahat-uz-Zaman and Bei Wang and Paul Rosen},
  title   = {{ChannelExplorer}: Exploring Class Separability Through Activation Channel Visualization},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics},
  volume  = {32},
  number  = {7},
  pages   = {5442--5456},
  year    = {2026},
  doi     = {10.1109/TVCG.2026.3669148},
  url     = {https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2026.3669148}
}

Deep neural networks (DNNs) achieve state-of-the-art performance in many vision tasks, yet understanding their internal behavior remains challenging—particularly how different layers and activation channels contribute to class separability. We introduce ChannelExplorer, an interactive visual analytics tool for analyzing image-based outputs across model layers, emphasizing data-driven insights over architecture analysis for exploring class separability. ChannelExplorer summarizes activations across layers and visualizes them using three primary coordinated views: a Scatterplot View to reveal inter- and intra-class confusion, a Jaccard Similarity View to quantify activation overlap, and a Heatmap View to inspect activation channel patterns. Our technique supports diverse model architectures, including CNNs, GANs, ResNet and Stable Diffusion models. We demonstrate the capabilities of ChannelExplorer through four use-case scenarios: (1) generating class hierarchy in ImageNet, (2) finding mislabeled images, (3) identifying activation channel contributions, and (4) locating latent states' position in Stable Diffusion model. Finally, we evaluate the tool with expert users.