Skin Cancer Detection Using Combined Decision of Deep Learners

Cancer is a deadly disease that arises due to the growth of uncontrollable body cells. Every year, a large number of people succumb to cancer and it’s been labeled as the most serious public health snag. Cancer can develop in any part of the human anatomy, which may consist of trillions of cellules. One of the most frequent type of cancer is skin cancer which develops in the upper layer of the skin. Previously, machine learning techniques have been used for skin cancer detection using protein sequences and different kinds of imaging modalities. The drawback of the machine learning approaches is that they require human-engineered features, which is a very laborious and time-taking activity. Deep learning addressed this issue to some extent by providing the facility of automatic feature extraction. In this study, convolution-based deep neural networks have been used for skin cancer detection using ISIC public dataset. Cancer detection is a sensitive issue, which is prone to errors if not timely and accurately detected. The performance of the individual machine learning models to detect cancer is limited. The combined decision of individual learners is expected to be more accurate than the individual learners. The ensemble learning technique exploits the diversity of learners to yield a better decision. Thus, the prediction accuracy can be enhanced by combing the decision of individual learners for sensitive issues such as cancer detection. In this paper, an ensemble of deep learners has been developed using learners of VGG, CapsNet, and ResNet for skin cancer detection. The results show that the combined decision of deep learners is superior to the finding of individual learners in terms of sensitivity, accuracy, specificity, F-score, and precision. The experimental results of this study provide a compelling reason to be applied for other disease detection.