Efficient diagnosis of psoriasis and lichen planus cutaneous diseases using deep learning approach

Abstract

The tendency of skin diseases to manifest in a unique and yet similar appearance, absence of enough competent dermatologists, and urgency of diagnosis and classification on time and accurately, makes the need of machine aided diagnosis blatant. This study is conducted with the purpose of broadening the research in skin disease diagnosis with computer by traversing the capabilities of deep Learning algorithms to classify two skin diseases noticeably close in appearance, Psoriasis and Lichen Planus. The resemblance between these two skin diseases is striking, often resulting in their classification within the same category. Despite this, there is a dearth of research focusing specifically on these diseases. A customized 50 layers ResNet-50 architecture of convolutional neural network is used and the results are validated through fivefold cross-validation, threefold cross-validation, and random split. By utilizing advanced data augmentation and class balancing techniques, the diversity of the dataset has increased, and the dataset imbalance has been minimized. ResNet-50 has achieved an accuracy of 89.07%, sensitivity of 86.46%, and specificity of 86.02%. With their promising results, these algorithms make the potential of machine aided diagnosis clear. Deep Learning algorithms could provide assistance to physicians and dermatologists by classification of skin diseases, with similar appearance, in real-time.

Keywords: Deep learning in dermatology; Diagnosis; Lichen planus; Psoriasis; ResNet-50 model.