DermoExpert: Skin lesion classification using a hybrid convolutional neural network through segmentation, transfer learning, and augmentation

Although automated Skin Lesion Classification (SLC) is a crucial integral step in computer-aided diagnosis, it remains challenging due to variability in textures, colors, indistinguishable boundaries, and shapes. This article proposes an automated dermoscopic SLC framework named Dermoscopic Expert (DermoExpert). It combines the pre-processing and hybrid Convolutional Neural Network (hybrid-CNN). The proposed hybrid-CNN has three distinct feature extractor modules, which are fused to achieve better-depth feature maps of the lesion. Those single and fused feature maps are classified using different fully connected layers, then ensembled to predict a lesion class. In the proposed pre-processing, we apply lesion segmentation, augmentation (geometry- and intensity-based), and class rebalancing (penalizing the majority class’s loss and merging additional images to the minority classes). Moreover, we leverage transfer learning from the pre-trained models. Finally, we deploy the weights of our DermoExpert to a possible web application. We evaluate our DermoExpert on the ISIC-2016, ISIC-2017, and ISIC-2018 datasets, where the DermoExpert has achieved the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.96, 0.95, and 0.97, respectively. The experimental results improve the state-of-the-art by the margins of 10.0% and 2.0%, respectively, for the ISIC-2016 and ISIC-2017 datasets in terms of AUC. The DermoExpert also outperforms by 3.0% for the ISIC-2018 dataset concerning a balanced accuracy. Since DermoExpert provides better classification outcomes on three different datasets, leading to a better recognition tool to assist dermatologists. Our source code and segmented masks for the ISIC-2018 dataset will be available as a public benchmark for future improvements.