A Time–Frequency Image Quality Evaluation Method Based on Improved LIME

Deep learning has the characteristics of high efficiency, high accuracy and low knowledge dependence, and has become a hot method in the research field of rotating machinery fault diagnosis. The time–frequency transform can show both the time and frequency characteristics of the vibration signal, so the time–frequency image is often used as the input of deep learning networks. At present, there are many time–frequency transform methods, and how to choose one is a problem worth discussing. This paper proposed a time–frequency image quality evaluation method based on improved local interpretable model-agnostic explanations (LIME). With the input of deep learning networks as the application background, this method evaluates the time–frequency image quality of rotating machinery vibration signals from two aspects: the accuracy of the diagnosis results and the consistency of the interpretation results with prior knowledge. The feasibility of the proposed evaluation method is verified by experiments on the measured data set, and engineers’ trust in the deep learning model is improved.