Impact of Deep Learning and Smartphone Technologies in Dermatology: Automated Diagnosis

Skin diseases are considered as major public health problems. Early diagnosis of skin diseases is crucial for patients to get the treatment on time. However, several factors make difficult to access medical care. For instance, physical disability, physiological problems, old age, distance, limited medical expertise in rural areas, climate conditions and employment. Also, long diagnosing time and high cost can discourage people from receiving dermatological care.The increasing availability and easy to use of smartphone applications has allowed significant growth of smartphones. Various smartphone applications have been introduced in different areas of medicine. They are becoming important particularly in dermatology since dermatological diseases are usually visible by human eyes and diagnosis is mainly based on visual screening of the lesions and pattern recognition. Therefore, patients can have active roles in their health-management using these applications. However, is it possible to diagnose skin diseases automatically with the advancements in mobile technologies and deep learning-based methodologies? To answer this question, in this paper, recent smartphone applications have been reviewed.