Assessing the effectiveness of artificial intelligence methods for melanoma: A retrospective review

Abstract

Background: Artificial intelligence methods for the classification of melanoma have been studied extensively. However, few studies compare these methods under the same standards.

Objective: To seek the best artificial intelligence method for diagnosis of melanoma.

Methods: The contrast test used 2200 dermoscopic images. Image segmentations, feature extractions, and classifications were performed in sequence for evaluation of traditional machine learning algorithms. The recent popular convolutional neural network frameworks were used for transfer learning training classification.

Results: The region growing algorithm has the best segmentation performance, with an intersection over union of 70.06% and a false-positive rate of 17.67%. Classification performance was better with logistic regression, with a sensitivity of 76.36% and a specificity of 87.04%. The Inception V3 model (Google, Mountain View, CA) worked best in deep learning algorithms: the accuracy was 93.74%, the sensitivity was 94.36%, and the specificity was 85.64%.

Limitations: There was no division in the severity of melanoma samples used in this experiment. The data set was relatively small for deep learning.

Conclusion: The performance of traditional machine learning is satisfactory for the small data set of melanoma dermoscopic images, and the potential for deep learning in the future big data era is enormous.

Keywords: artificial intelligence; classification; deep learning; melanoma diagnosis; segmentation; traditional machine learning.