A Deep Learning Approach to Skin Cancer Detection in Dermoscopy Images

This work proposes a deep learning model for skin cancer detection from skin lesion images. In this analytic study, from HAM10000 dermoscopy image database, 3400 images were employed including melanoma and non-melanoma lesions. The images comprised 860 melanoma, 327 actinic keratoses and intraepithelial carcinoma (AKIEC), 513 basal cell carcinoma (BCC), 795 melanocytic nevi, 790 benign keratosis, and 115 dermatofibroma cases. A deep convolutional neural network was developed to classify the images into benign and malignant classes. A transfer learning method was leveraged with AlexNet as the pre-trained model. The proposed model takes the raw image as the input and automatically learns useful features from the image for classification. Therefore, it eliminates complex procedures of lesion segmentation and feature extraction. The proposed model achieved an area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of 0.91. Using a confidence score threshold of 0.5, a classification accuracy of 84%, the sensitivity of 81%, and specificity of 88% was obtained. The user can change the confidence threshold to adjust sensitivity and specificity if desired. The results indicate the high potential of deep learning for the detection of skin cancer including melanoma and non-melanoma malignancies. The proposed approach can be deployed to assist dermatologists in skin cancer detection. Moreover, it can be applied in smartphones for self-diagnosis of malignant skin lesions. Hence, it may expedite cancer detection that is critical for effective treatment.