Skin cancer diagnosis (SCD) using Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Improved Gray Wolf Optimization (IGWO)

Skin Cancer (SC) is one of the most dangerous types of cancer and if not treated in time, it can threaten the patient's life. With early diagnosis of this disease, treatment methods can be used more effectively and the progression of the disease can be prevented. Machine Learning (ML) techniques can be utilized as a useful and efficient tool for SCD. So far, various methods for automatic SCD based on ML techniques have been presented; However, this research field still requires the application of optimal and efficient models to increase the accuracy of SCD. Therefore, in this article, a new method for SCD using a combination of optimization techniques and Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) is presented. The proposed method includes four steps: pre-processing, segmentation, feature extraction, and classification. Image segmentation for identifying the lesion region is performed using a Kohonen neural network, where the identified region of interest (ROI) is enhanced using the Greedy Search Algorithm (GSA). The proposed method, uses a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for extracting features from ROIs. Also, to classify features, an ANN is used, and by the Improved Gray Wolf Optimization (IGWO) algorithm, the number of neurons and weight vector are adjusted. In this method, a probabilistic model is used to improve the convergence speed of the GWO algorithm. Based on the evaluation results, using the IGWO model to optimize the structure and weight vector of the ANN can be effective in increasing the diagnosis accuracy by at least 5%. The results of implementing the proposed method and comparing its performance with previous methods also show that this method can diagnose SC in the ISIC-2016 and ISIC-2017 databases with an average accuracy of 97.09 and 95.17%, respectively; which improves accuracy by at least 0.5% compared to other methods.