Cristiano Patrício

B.Sc. · M.Sc. · Ph.D. Candidate · cristiano.patricio@ubi.pt

Latest News & Announcements

Paper accepted for publication in Pattern Recognition Letters

Unsupervised contrastive analysis for anomaly detection in brain MRIs via conditional diffusion models

Published on: November 06, 2025

Paper accepted for publication in Computers in Biology and Medicine

CBVLM: Training-free Explainable Concept-based Large Vision Language Models for Medical Image Classification

Published on: September 25, 2025

Cristiano Patrício received a B.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering (17/20) in 2019 from the Polytechnic of Guarda and his M.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering (18/20) in 2021 from the University of Beira Interior. He received 1 Merit Scholarship in the 2018/2019 academic year and was one of the winners of the Huawei Scholarship Program in 2023. Cristiano is pursuing his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Beira Interior under a Ph.D. research grant from the Portuguese national funding agency for science (FCT). During his third year of Ph.D., Cristiano spent four months as a visiting Ph.D. student at the Computer Science Department of the University of Turin, hosted by the EIDOSLab research group. He is currently a Research Assistant at INESC TEC and an Invited Assistant at the University of Beira Interior. Previously, Cristiano participated in developing solutions for the Altice Portugal Foundation (MagicContact Web) projects and for the “Perception for a Service Robot” project of NOVA LINCS. His work focuses on developing inherently interpretable deep learning models for pathology diagnosis in medical imaging. His research interests include the topics of Explainable AI, Deep Learning and Medical Image Analysis. He authored 9 research papers in international conferences and journals.

Experience

Invited Assistant

Polytechnic Institute of Guarda

Fall (2025/26)

Course: Communication and Information Visualization
1st year - TAD

Spring (2022/23)

Course: Microprocessors and Embedded Systems
2nd year - LMII

Fall (2021/22)

Course: Information and Communications Technologies
1st year - TG

Spring (2021/22)

Course: Information Technologies
1st year - TGAT

November 2021 - Present

Invited Assistant

Univeristy of Beira Interior

Spring (2023/24)

Course: Human Computer Interaction
2nd year - LEI

Spring (2024/25)

Course: Human Computer Interaction
2nd year - LEI

February 2024 - Present

Ph.D. Research Fellow

Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)

Ph.D. research grant from the Portuguese national funding agency for science (FCT).

September 2022 - Present

Research Assistant

INESC TEC

Research Assistant at Visual Computing & Machine Intelligence Research Group (Centre for Telecommunications and Multimedia).

February 2022 - Present

Visiting Ph.D. Student

EIDOSLAB Research Group, University of Turin, Italy

Visiting Ph.D. Student at EIDOSLAB Research Group, University of Turin, Italy.

September 2023 - December 2023

Research Fellow

NOVA Laboratory for Computer Science and Informatics - UBI

Research fellow at NOVA LINCS in the scope of PhD.

December 2021 - May 2021

Research Fellow

NOVA Laboratory for Computer Science and Informatics - UBI

Research fellow at NOVA LINCS where I developed my master’s dissertation titled “A zero-shot learning method for recognizing objects using low-power devices” in the scope of the “Perception for a Service Robot” project. Coding in Python, Tensorflow, and Keras.

October 2020 - July 2021

Web Developer

MagicKey

Design and development of a AAC web application – MagicContact Web, as the final project to obtain the title of Bachelors in Computer Science and Engineering.

December 2018 - July 2019

Education

University of Beira Interior

Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering

Research Areas: Deep Learning, Explainable AI, Medical Image Analysis
Topic: Explainable AI for Medical Imaging

September 2021 - 2025 (expected)

University of Beira Interior

M.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering

Research Area: Artificial Intelligence
Thesis: A zero-shot learning method for recognizing objects using low-power devices
Grade: 18(A)

September 2019 - July 2021

Polytechnic Institute of Guarda

B.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering

Main fieds: Programming and Multimedia, Software Enginnering, Networks and Systems, Electronics.
Final Project: MagicContact Web – Aplicação Web de Comunicação Aumentativa e Alternativa
Grade: 17(A)

September 2016 - July 2019

Research

PREPRINTS

Cristiano Patrício, Luís F. Teixeira, João C. Neves
ViConEx-Med: Visual Concept Explainability via Multi-Concept Token Transformer for Medical Image Analysis
arXiv preprint

Just Accepted

Cristiano Patrício, Carlo Alberto Barbano, Attilio Fiandrotti, Riccardo Renzulli, Marco Grangetto, Luís F. Teixeira, João C. Neves
Unsupervised contrastive analysis for anomaly detection in brain MRIs via conditional diffusion models
Pattern Recognition Letters
SJR: Q1

Conferences

Cristiano Patrício, Luis F. Teixeira, João C. Neves
SynSkin: A Synthetic Skin Lesion-Like Dataset for Benchmarking Dermoscopic Color Concepts
31th Portuguese Conference on Pattern Recognition (RECPAD), October 30, Aveiro, Portugal, 2025

Cristiano Patrício, Luís F. Teixeira, João C. Neves
Towards Concept-based Interpretability of Skin Lesion Diagnosis using Vision-Language Models
21th IEEE International Symposyum in Biomedical Imaging (ISBI), May 27-30, Athens, Greece, 2024

Isabel Rio-Torto, Cristiano Patrício, Helena Montenegro, Tiago Gonçalves, Jaime S. Cardoso
Detecting Concepts and Generating Captions from Medical Images
29th Portuguese Conference on Pattern Recognition (RECPAD), October 27, Coimbra, Portugal, 2023

Helena Montenegro, Pedro Neto, Cristiano Patrício, Isabel Rio-Torto, Tiago Gonçalves, Luis F. Teixeira
Evaluating Privacy on Synthetic Images Generated using GANs
29th Portuguese Conference on Pattern Recognition (RECPAD), October 27, Coimbra, Portugal, 2023

Cristiano Patrício, João C. Neves, Luis F. Teixeira
Coherent Concept-based Explanations in Medical Image and Its Application to Skin Lesion Diagnosis
IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops (CVPRW), Vancouver, BC, Canada, pp. 3799-3808, 2023

Isabel Rio-Torto, Cristiano Patrício, Helena Montenegro, Tiago Gonçalves, Jaime S. Cardoso
Detecting Concepts and Generating Captions from Medical Images: Contributions of the VCMI Team to ImageCLEFmed Caption 2023
Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum (CLEF), 2023

Helena Montenegro, Pedro Neto, Cristiano Patrício, Isabel Rio-Torto, Tiago Gonçalves, Luis F. Teixeira
Evaluating Privacy on Synthetic Images Generated using GANs: Contributions of the VCMI Team to ImageCLEFmed Caption 2023
Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum (CLEF), 2023

Cristiano Patrício, Nuno Pereira, João C. Neves, Luis F. Teixeira
An Inherently Interpretable Classifier for Automatic Skin Lesion Diagnosis
28th Portuguese Conference on Pattern Recognition (RECPAD), October 28, Leiria, Portugal, 2022

Isabel Rio-Torto, Cristiano Patrício, Helena Montenegro, Tiago Gonçalves
Detecting Concepts and Generating Captions from Medical Images: Contributions of the VCMI Team to ImageCLEFmed Caption 2022
Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum (CLEF), 2022

Cristiano Patrício, João C. Neves
ZSpeedL - Evaluating the Performance of Zero-Shot Learning Methods using Low-Power Devices
IEEE International Conference on Advanced Video and Signal Based Surveillance (AVSS), pp. 1-8, 2021
CORE: B

Cristiano Patrício, João C. Neves
Evaluating the Performance of Zero-Shot Learning Methods using Low-Power Devices
27th Portuguese Conference on Pattern Recognition (RECPAD), November 5, Évora, Portugal, 2021

Journals

Cristiano Patrício, Isabel Rio-Torto, Jaime S. Cardoso, Luís F. Teixeira, and João C. Neves
CBVLM: Training-free Explainable Concept-based Large Vision Language Models for Medical Image Classification
Computers in Biology and Medicine, vol. 198, pp.111145, 2025
SJR: Q1

Cristiano Patrício, Luís F. Teixeira, and João C. Neves
A Two-Step Concept-Based Approach for Enhanced Interpretability and Trust in Skin Lesion Diagnosis
Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal, vol. 28, pp. 71-79, 2025
SJR: Q1

Cristiano Patrício, João C. Neves, Luis F. Teixeira
Explainable Deep Learning Methods in Medical Image Classification: A Survey
ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), vol. 56 (4), pp. 1-41, 2023
SJR: Q1

Cristiano Patrício, João C. Neves
Zero-Shot Face Recognition: Improving the Discriminability of Visual Face Features Using a Semantic-Guided Attention Model
Expert Systems With Applications, 1186353, 2023
SJR: Q1

Book Chapters

Cristiano Patrício, Rui Pinto, Gonçalo Marques
A Study on Software Testing Standard Using ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119-2: 2013
Recent Advances in Intelligent Systems and Smart Applications. Studies in Systems, Decision and Control, vol 295. Springer, Cham, 2020

Cristiano Patrício, Tiago Lucas , Celestino Goncalves, Nuno Pinto, Daniel Freitas, Luís Figueiredo
MagicContact Web: A Multiplatform Application for Augmentative and Alternative Communication
Advances in Usability, User Experience, Wearable and Assistive Technology. AHFE 2020. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1217. Springer, Cham, 2020

Thesis / Dissertation

Cristiano Patrício
A zero-shot learning method for recognizing objects using low-power devices
MSc Thesis, University of Beira Interior, Covilhã, Portugal, 2021

Cristiano Patrício
MagicContact Web - Aplicação Web de Comunicação Aumentativa e Alternativa
BSc Final Project Report, Polytechnic Institute of Guarda, Guarda, Portugal, 2019

Peer Review

International Conferences

Thirty-Ninth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2025
12th Iberian Conference on Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis (IbPRA), 2025
Workshop on Safe Artificial Intelligence for All Domains (SAIAD) at CVPR, 2025
Workshop on Interpretability of Machine Intelligence in Medical Image Computing (iMIMIC) at MICCAI, 2024
Workshop on Safe Artificial Intelligence for All Domains (SAIAD) at CVPR, 2024
International Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP), 2023
Workshop on Interpretability of Machine Intelligence in Medical Image Computing (iMIMIC) at MICCAI, 2023
IEEE International Conference on Advanced Video and Signal-Based Surveillance (AVSS), 2022
Workshop on Interpretability of Machine Intelligence in Medical Image Computing (iMIMIC) at MICCAI, 2022
IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI), 2022
EAI GOODTECHS 2021 - EAI International Conference on Smart Objects and Technologies for Social Good

International Journals

ACM Computing Surveys
IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging
Pattern Recognition
NeuroImage
Scientific Reports

Students

B.SC. Students

Beatriz Santos
VisDermXplain - Modelo Interpretável para Diagnóstico de Melanoma Baseado em Características Visuais de Imagens Dermatoscópicas
University of Beira Interior, Covilhã, Portugal, 2025
(co-advisor)

Ana Silva
SyMMetron: Modelo Especializado na Deteção de Simetria em Imagens
University of Beira Interior, Covilhã, Portugal, 2025
(co-advisor)

Bruno Gonçalves
Diagnóstico de Melanoma Baseado em Características Visuais de Imagens Dermatoscópicas
University of Beira Interior, Covilhã, Portugal, 2025
(co-advisor)

Sara Inácio
Sistema automático para diagnóstico de lesões cutâneas baseado em conceitos dermatoscópicos
University of Beira Interior, Covilhã, Portugal, 2023
(co-advisor)

Alexandre Monteiro
Modelo baseado em deep learning para a classificação de doenças pulmonares em imagens raio-X do tórax
University of Beira Interior, Covilhã, Portugal, 2022
(co-advisor)

Projects

Websites

Distância & Perspetiva, Lda

Castelo Branco

Ver

2021

EVOCasa

Castelo Branco

Ver

2022

A.C.D.R. Rapoula

Rapoula, Guarda

Ver

2023

Ciclomotores Orlindo

Rapoula, Guarda

Ver

2024

Interests

Reading
Chess
Trail Runner ACDR Rapoula
Playing Guitar/Accordion
DYI Activities @ Home

Selected Quotes

"Hard work always pays off, whatever you do." - Dustin Lynch

"If you want to master something, teach it. The more you teach, the better you learn. Teaching is a powerful tool to learning." - Richard P. Feynman

Prizes & Certifications

Winner of the 2nd edition of the Huawei Portugal University Scholarship Program, Lisbon, Portugal (2023)
Linear Algebra for Machine Learning and Data Science, Coursera (2023)
Certificate of Pedagogical Skills (CCP) N.º F733564/2022, IEFP (2022)
Reviewer for the conference EAI Goodtechs (2021)
AI for Medical Diagnosis, Coursera (2021)
Optimizing TF Models For Deployment with TensorRT, Coursera (2021)
Convolutional Neural Networks, Coursera (2021)
Structuring Machine Learning Projects, Coursera (2021)
Improving Deep Neural Networks: Hyperparameter tuning, Regularization and Optimization, Coursera (2020)
Neural Networks and Deep Learning, Coursera (2020)
Academic Merit Scholarship, Polytechnic Institute of Guarda, Guarda, Portugal (2019)
Robô Bombeiro, “Mr. Robot” Team, Polytechnic Institute of Guarda, Guarda, Portugal (2018)
Excellence and Honour Award, Escola Secundária da Sé, Guarda, Portugal (2016)
Training on the use, operation, and maintenance of the Fiber Galvo FL laser machine (2014)
Training on the use, operation, and maintenance of the Speedy 100R laser machine (2012)

Volunteering

Fiscal Council President

Associação Cultural, Desportiva e Recreativa da Rapoula (ACDR Rapoula)

Accountable for website management, social media publications, and graphic design tasks.

September 2022 - September 2025

Vogal

Associação de Benfeitores de São Marcos, Rapoula

Accountable for social media publications and graphic design tasks.

December 2017 - August 2022

Fiscal Council Secretary

Computer Science Student Group (NEI-IPG) - Polytechnic of Guarda

September 2017 - September 2018