# Analyzing Hierarchical Structure in Vision Models with Sparse Autoencoders Source: [Analyzing Hierarchical Structure in Vision Models with Sparse Autoencoders]() Collection index: [llms.txt]() Data updated: 2025-10-28T13:57:16.833Z Authors: Matthew Lyle Olson, Musashi Hinck, Neale Ratzlaff, Changbai Li, Phillip Howard, Vasudev Lal, Shao-Yen Tseng Published: 2025-05-21T19:38:48.000Z ## Abstract The ImageNet hierarchy provides a structured taxonomy of object categories, offering a valuable lens through which to analyze the representations learned by deep vision models. In this work, we conduct a comprehensive analysis of how vision models encode the ImageNet hierarchy, leveraging Sparse Autoencoders (SAEs) to probe their internal representations. SAEs have been widely used as an explanation tool for large language models (LLMs), where they enable the discovery of semantically meaningful features. Here, we extend their use to vision models to investigate whether learned representations align with the ontological structure defined by the ImageNet taxonomy. Our results show that SAEs uncover hierarchical relationships in model activations, revealing an implicit encoding of taxonomic structure. We analyze the consistency of these representations across different layers of the popular vision foundation model DINOv2 and provide insights into how deep vision models internalize hierarchical category information by increasing information in the class token through each layer. Our study establishes a framework for systematic hierarchical analysis of vision model representations and highlights the potential of SAEs as a tool for probing semantic structure in deep networks. ## Recorded benchmark results A research result applies to its stated dataset, split, metric and evaluation configuration. Compare like-for-like settings, preserve the metric's unit and direction, and distinguish paper-reported results from independent reproduction. The best result recorded here is not a claim of exhaustive, current global coverage. ## Original sources and implementation [Original paper]() [PDF]()