New AI app can spot skin cancer
A NEW app could allow people to tell if they have skin cancer using their smartphone.
The AI tool can recognise dangerous growths from 134 disorders and help people to diagnose themselves.
It is about as good as a trainee dermatologist and could double the number of skin cancers that get detected by the public, researchers claim.
Study leader Dr Jung-im Na said: “We anticipate that the use of our algorithm with a smartphone could encourage the public to visit specialists for cancerous lesions such as melanoma that might have been neglected otherwise.
“Our results suggest that our algorithm may serve as an Augmented Intelligence that can empower medical professionals in diagnostic dermatology.
“Rather than AI replacing humans, we expect AI to support humans as
Augmented Intelligence to reach diagnoses faster and more accurately.”
Moles
The app’s algorithm was trained on 220,000 images of people with 174 skin diseases, and can also suggest treatment options.
The study found it could diagnose 134 of them – a massive step from previous AI which only managed to tell between specific skin cancers from moles.
Tests showed it identified skin conditions from photos better than 23 nonexperts, about as well as 26 trainee dermatologists and slightly worse than 21 dermatologists.
The professionals’ accuracy at diagnosing cancerous growths improved from 77.4% to 86.8% using the app. And it almost doubled to more than 87% for the non-experts.
Dr Na, from Seoul National University, South
Korea, added: “If the algorithm’s performance can be reproduced in the clinical setting, it will be promising for the early detection of skin cancer with a smartphone.
“We hope that future studies will evaluate the utility and performance of our algorithms in a clinical setting.
“However, there are issues with the quality or composition of photographs taken by the general public that may affect the results of the algorithm.”
The study was published in the Journal Of Investigative Dermatology.