Deep learning in dermatology: a systematic review of current approaches, outcomes, and limitations
Open accessAbstract
Artificial intelligence (AI) has recently made great advances in image classification and malignancy prediction in the field of dermatology. However, understanding the applicability of AI in clinical dermatology practice remains challenging owing to the variability of models, image data, database characteristics, and variable outcome metrics. This systematic review aims to provide a comprehensive overview of dermatology literature using convolutional neural networks. Furthermore, the review summarizes the current landscape of image datasets, transfer learning approaches, challenges, and limitations within current AI literature and current regulatory pathways for approval of models as clinical decision support tools.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Prior systematic reviews and meta-analyses have concentrated on the detection of skin cancer using image-based AI models.
“Prior systematic reviews9–11 and meta-analyses12,13 have concentrated on the detection of skin cancer using image-based AI models”
From Assessing the performance of artificial intelligence models in evaluating inflammatory skin disease severity: a systematic review and meta-analysis (2025) · cites this paper as [10]
The Introduction describes this as a review of AI applications to dermatological images, and the Results include numerous image-based melanoma and skin-cancer classification studies. But the Abstract and Results also cover other skin conditions, datasets, and clinical applications; the paper is broader than skin-cancer detection alone. No page numbers are available in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.82)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 87 · Cited by 134
Research works printed but not linked: 68
- Aggarwal S.L.P. Data augmentation in dermatology image recognition using machine learning Skin Res Technol 25 2019 815 820 31140653
- Araújo RL, Ricardo de Andrade LR, Rodrigues JJ, Silva RR. Automatic segmentation of melanoma skin cancer using deep learning. Paper presented at: 2020 IEEE International Conference on E-health Networking, Application & Services (HEALTHCOM). 1‒2 March 2021; Shenzhen, China.
- Ashraf H. Waris A. Ghafoor M.F. Gilani S.O. Niazi I.K. Melanoma segmentation using deep learning with test-time augmentations and conditional random fields Sci Rep 12 2022 3948 35273282 PMC8913825
- Brinker T.J. Hekler A. Enk A.H. Klode J. Hauschild A. Berking C. A convolutional neural network trained with dermoscopic images performed on par with 145 dermatologists in a clinical melanoma image classification task Eur J Cancer 111 2019 148 154 30852421
- Brüngel R, Friedrich CM. DETR and YOLOv5: exploring performance and self-training for diabetic foot ulcer detection. A paper presented at: 2021 IEEE 34th International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems (CBMS). 7‒9 June 2021; Aveiro, Portugal.
- Carin L. Pencina M.J. On deep learning for medical image analysis JAMA 320 2018 1192 1193 30422287
- Cassidy B. Kendrick C. Brodzicki A. Jaworek-Korjakowska J. Yap M.H. Analysis of the ISIC image datasets: usage, benchmarks and recommendations Med Image Anal 75 2022 102305 34852988
- Cassidy B. Reeves N.D. Pappachan J.M. Gillespie D. O’Shea C. Rajbhandari S. The DFUC 2020 dataset: analysis towards diabetic foot ulcer detection touchREV Endocrinol 17 2021 5 11 35118441 PMC8320006
- Cho S.I. Sun S. Mun J.H. Kim C. Kim S.Y. Cho S. Dermatologist-level classification of malignant lip diseases using a deep convolutional neural network Br J Dermatol 182 2020 1388 1394 31449661
- Codella NC, Gutman D, Celebi ME, Helba B, Marchetti MA, Dusza SW, et al. Skin lesion analysis toward melanoma detection: a challenge at the 2017 international symposium on biomedical imaging (ISBI), hosted by the international skin imaging collaboration (ISIC). A paper presented at: 2018 IEEE 15th International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI 2018). 4‒7 April 2018; Washington, DC.
- Deng J, Dong W, Socher R, Li L-J, Li K, Fei-Fei L. Imagenet: a large-scale hierarchical image database. A paper presented at: 2009 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition. 20‒25 June 2009; Miami, FL.
- Deng L. The MNIST database of handwritten digit images for machine learning research [best of the web] IEEE Signal Process Mag 29 2012 141 142
- Ehteshami Bejnordi B.E. Balkenhol M. Litjens G. Holland R. Bult P. Karssemeijer N. Automated detection of DCIS in whole-slide H&E stained breast histopathology images IEEE Trans Med Imaging 35 2016 2141 2150 27076354
- Esteva A. Kuprel B. Novoa R.A. Ko J. Swetter S.M. Blau H.M. Corrigendum: dermatologist-level classification of skin cancer with deep neural networks Nature 546 2017 686 28658222
- Fujisawa Y. Otomo Y. Ogata Y. Nakamura Y. Fujita R. Ishitsuka Y. Deep-learning-based, computer-aided classifier developed with a small dataset of clinical images surpasses board-certified dermatologists in skin tumour diagnosis Br J Dermatol 180 2019 373 381 29953582
- Garg A.X. Adhikari N.K.J. McDonald H. Rosas-Arellano M.P. Devereaux P.J. Beyene J. Effects of computerized clinical decision support systems on practitioner performance and patient outcomes: a systematic review JAMA 293 2005 1223 1238 15755945
- Goh K.H. Wang L. Yeow A.Y.K. Poh H. Li K. Yeow J.J.L. Artificial intelligence in sepsis early prediction and diagnosis using unstructured data in healthcare Nat Commun 12 2021 711 33514699 PMC7846756
- Gown A.M. Goldstein L.C. Barry T.S. Kussick S.J. Kandalaft P.L. Kim P.M. High concordance between immunohistochemistry and fluorescence in situ hybridization testing for HER2 status in breast cancer requires a normalized IHC scoring system Mod Pathol 21 2008 1271 1277 18487992
- Goyal M. Oakley A. Bansal P. Dancey D. Yap M.H. Skin lesion segmentation in dermoscopic images with ensemble deep learning methods IEEE Access 8 2019 4171 4181
- Goyal M, Yap MH, Reeves ND, Rajbhandari S, Spragg J. Fully convolutional networks for diabetic foot ulcer segmentation. A paper presented at: 2017 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC). 5‒8 October 2017; Banff, Alabama, Canada.
- Guergueb T. Akhloufi M.A. Melanoma skin cancer detection using recent deep learning models Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc 2021 2021 3074 3077 34891892
- Gulshan V. Peng L. Coram M. Stumpe M.C. Wu D. Narayanaswamy A. Development and validation of a deep learning algorithm for detection of diabetic retinopathy in retinal fundus photographs JAMA 316 2016 2402 2410 27898976
- Haenssle H.A. Fink C. Schneiderbauer R. Toberer F. Buhl T. Blum A. Man against machine: diagnostic performance of a deep learning convolutional neural network for dermoscopic melanoma recognition in comparison to 58 dermatologists Ann Oncol 29 2018 1836 1842 29846502
- Haenssle H.A. Fink C. Toberer F. Winkler J. Stolz W. Deinlein T. Man against machine reloaded: performance of a market-approved convolutional neural network in classifying a broad spectrum of skin lesions in comparison with 96 dermatologists working under less artificial conditions Ann Oncol 31 2020 137 143 31912788
- Han S.S. Moon I.J. Lim W. Suh I.S. Lee S.Y. Na J.I. Keratinocytic skin cancer detection on the face using region-based convolutional neural network JAMA Dermatol 156 2020 29 37 31799995 PMC6902187
- He K. Zhang X. Ren S. Sun J. Deep residual learning for image recognition. The IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) Computer Vision Foundation, Las Vegas Valley, NV, 2016 770 778
- Hekler A. Utikal J.S. Enk A.H. Hauschild A. Weichenthal M. Maron R.C. Superior skin cancer classification by the combination of human and artificial intelligence Eur J Cancer 120 2019 114 121 31518967
- Jafari M.H. Nasr-Esfahani E. Karimi N. Soroushmehr S.M.R. Samavi S. Najarian K. Extraction of skin lesions from non-dermoscopic images for surgical excision of melanoma Int J Comput Assist Radiol Surg 12 2017 1021 1030 28342106
- Jain A. Way D. Gupta V. Gao Y. de Oliveira Marinho G. Hartford J. Development and assessment of an artificial intelligence–based tool for skin condition diagnosis by primary care physicians and nurse practitioners in teledermatology practices JAMA Netw Open 4 2021 e217249 PMC8082316 33909055
- Jiang F. Jiang Y. Zhi H. Dong Y. Li H. Ma S. Artificial intelligence in healthcare: past, present and future Stroke Vasc Neurol 2 2017 230 243 29507784 PMC5829945
- Jojoa Acosta M.F. Caballero Tovar L.Y. Garcia-Zapirain M.B. Percybrooks W.S. Melanoma diagnosis using deep learning techniques on dermatoscopic images BMC Med Imaging 21 2021 6 33407213 PMC7789790
- Juhn Y. Liu H. Artificial intelligence approaches using natural language processing to advance EHR-based clinical research J Allergy Clin Immunol 145 2020 463 469 31883846 PMC7771189
- Kawahara J. Daneshvar S. Argenziano G. Hamarneh G. Seven-point checklist and skin lesion classification using multitask multimodal neural nets IEEE J Biomed Health Inform 23 2018 538 546 29993994
- Kawahara J. Hamarneh G. Multi-resolution-tract CNN with hybrid pretrained and skin-lesion trained layers Wan L. Adeli E. Wang Q. Shi Y. Suk H.I. Machine learning in medical imaging. MLMI 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2016 Springer Heidelberg, Germany 164 171
- Kaymak S, Esmaili P, Serener A. Deep learning for two-step classification of malignant pigmented skin lesions. A paper presented at: 2018 14th Symposium on Neural Networks and Applications (NEUREL). 20‒21 November 2018; Belgrade, Serbia.
- Komorowski M. Celi L.A. Badawi O. Gordon A.C. Faisal A.A. The artificial intelligence clinician learns optimal treatment strategies for sepsis in intensive care Nat Med 24 2018 1716 1720 30349085
- Lauritsen S.M. Kristensen M. Olsen M.V. Larsen M.S. Lauritsen K.M. Jørgensen M.J. Explainable artificial intelligence model to predict acute critical illness from electronic health records Nat Commun 11 2020 3852 32737308 PMC7395744
- Li Y.X. Shen L.L. Skin lesion analysis towards melanoma detection using deep learning network Sensors (Basel) 18 2018 556 29439500 PMC5855504
- Lin T.-Y. Maire M. Belongie S. Hays J. Perona P. Ramanan D. Microsoft COCO: common objects in context Fleet D. Pajdla T. Schiele B. Tuytelaars T. Computer vision – ECCV 2014. ECCV 2014. Lecture notes in computer science 2014 Springer Heidelberg, Germany 740 755
- Liu Y. Jain A. Eng C. Way D.H. Lee K. Bui P. A deep learning system for differential diagnosis of skin diseases Nat Med 26 2020 900 908 32424212
- Lopez AR. Giro-i-Nieto X, Burdick J, Marques O. Skin lesion classification from dermoscopic images using deep learning techniques. A paper presented at: 2017 13th IASTED International Conference on Biomedical Engineering (BioMed). 20‒21 February 2017; Innsbruck, Austria.
- Mahbod A, Schaefer G, Wang CL, Ecker R, Ellinger I. Skin lesion classification using hybrid deep neural networks. A paper presented at: ICASSP 2019 - 2019 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP). 12‒17 May 2019; Brighton, United Kingdom.
- Maron R.C. Weichenthal M. Utikal J.S. Hekler A. Berking C. Hauschild A. Systematic outperformance of 112 dermatologists in multiclass skin cancer image classification by convolutional neural networks Eur J Cancer 119 2019 57 65 31419752
- Meienberger N. Anzengruber F. Amruthalingam L. Christen R. Koller T. Maul J.T. Observer-independent assessment of psoriasis-affected area using machine learning J Eur Acad Dermatol Venereol 34 2020 1362 1368 31594034
- Menegola A, Fornaciali M, Pires R, Bittencourt FV, Avila S, Valle E. Knowledge transfer for melanoma screening with deep learning. A paper presented at: 2017 IEEE 14th International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI 2017). 18‒21 April 2017; Melbourne, Australia.
- Mishra R, Daescu O. Deep learning for skin lesion segmentation. A paper presented at: 2017 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine (BIBM). 13‒16 November 2017; Kansas City, MO.
- Mobiny A. Singh A. Van Nguyen H. Risk-aware machine learning classifier for skin lesion diagnosis J Clin Med 8 2019 1241 31426482 PMC6723257
- Papadakis M. Paschos A. Manios A. Lehmann P. Manios G. Zirngibl H. Computer-aided clinical image analysis for non-invasive assessment of tumor thickness in cutaneous melanoma BMC Res Notes 14 2021 232 34127072 PMC8201878
- Pereira S. Pinto A. Alves V. Silva C.A. Brain tumor segmentation using convolutional neural networks in MRI images IEEE Trans Med Imaging 35 2016 1240 1251 26960222
- Petty A.J. Ackerson B. Garza R. Peterson M. Liu B. Green C. Meta-analysis of number needed to treat for diagnosis of melanoma by clinical setting J Am Acad Dermatol 82 2020 1158 1165 31931085 PMC7167347
- Pomponiu V, Nejati H, Cheung NM. Deepmole: deep neural networks for skin mole lesion classification. A paper presented at: 2016 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP). 25‒28 September 2016; Phoenix, AZ.
- Pour M.P. Seker H. Shao L. Automated lesion segmentation and dermoscopic feature segmentation for skin cancer analysis Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc 2017 640 643 29059954
- Qaiser T. Mukherjee A. Reddy Pb C. Munugoti S.D. Tallam V. Pitkäaho T. HER2 challenge contest: a detailed assessment of automated HER2 scoring algorithms in whole slide images of breast cancer tissues Histopathology 72 2018 227 238 28771788
- Raj R. Londhe N.D. Sonawane R.R.S. Automated psoriasis lesion segmentation from unconstrained environment using residual U-Net with transfer learning Comput Methods Programs Biomed 206 2021 106123 33975181
- Shahin AH, Kamal A, Elattar MA. Deep ensemble learning for skin lesion classification from dermoscopic images. A paper presented at: 2018 9th Cairo International Biomedical Engineering Conference (CIBEC). 20‒22 December 2018; Cairo, Egypt.
- Sun X.X. Yang J.F. Sun M. Wang K. A benchmark for automatic visual classification of clinical skin disease images Leibe B. Matas J. Sebe N. Welling M. Computer vision - ECCV 2016. ECCV 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2016 Springer Heidelberg, Germany 206 222
- Thomsen K. Christensen A.L. Iversen L. Lomholt H.B. Winther O. Deep learning for diagnostic binary classification of multiple-lesion skin diseases Front Med (Lausanne) 7 2020 574329 PMC7536339 33072786
- Tschandl P. Rosendahl C. Akay B.N. Argenziano G. Blum A. Braun R.P. Expert-level diagnosis of nonpigmented skin cancer by combined convolutional neural networks JAMA Dermatol 155 2019 58 65 30484822 PMC6439580
- Tschandl P. Rosendahl C. Kittler H. The HAM10000 dataset, a large collection of multi-source dermatoscopic images of common pigmented skin lesions Sci Data 5 2018 180161 PMC6091241 30106392
- Voulodimos A. Doulamis N. Doulamis A. Protopapadakis E. Deep learning for computer vision: a brief review Comput Intell Neurosci 2018 2018 7068349 PMC5816885 29487619
- Webster D.E. Suver C. Doerr M. Mounts E. Domenico L. Petrie T. The Mole Mapper Study, mobile phone skin imaging and melanoma risk data collected using ResearchKit Sci Data 4 2017 170005 PMC5308198 28195576
- Wu H.J. Yin H. Chen H.P. Sun M.Y. Liu X.Q. Yu Y.Z. A deep learning, image based approach for automated diagnosis for inflammatory skin diseases Ann Transl Med 8 2020 581 32566608 PMC7290553
- Xiao J, Hays J, Ehinger KA, Oliva A, Torralba A. Sun database: large-scale scene recognition from abbey to zoo. A paper presented at: 2010 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition. 13‒18 June 2010; San Francisco, CA.
- Yang Y. Wang J. Xie F. Liu J. Shu C. Wang Y. A convolutional neural network trained with dermoscopic images of psoriasis performed on par with 230 dermatologists Comput Biol Med 139 2021 104924 34688173
- Yap MH, Cassidy B, Pappachan JM, O’Shea C, Gillespie D, Reeves ND. Analysis towards classification of infection and ischaemia of diabetic foot ulcers. A paper presented at: 2021 IEEE EMBS International Conference on Biomedical and Health Informatics (BHI). 27‒30 July 2021; Athens, Greece.
- Yu C. Yang S. Kim W. Jung J. Chung K.Y. Lee S.W. Acral melanoma detection using a convolutional neural network for dermoscopy images [published correction appears in PLoS One 2018;13:e0196621] PLoS One 13 2018 e0193321 PMC5841780 29513718
- Yu L.Q. Chen H. Dou Q. Qin J. Heng P.A. Automated melanoma recognition in dermoscopy images via very deep residual networks IEEE Trans Med Imaging 36 2017 994 1004 28026754
- Zhao S. Xie B. Li Y. Zhao X. Kuang Y. Su J. Smart identification of psoriasis by images using convolutional neural networks: a case study in China J Eur Acad Dermatol Venereol 34 2020 518 524 31541556
- Authors
- Jeong, H. K., Park, C., Henao, R., & Kheterpal, M.
- Affiliations
- Duke University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Kheterpal, Meenal
- Venue
- JID Innovations
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2023-01
- Volume
- 3
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 100150
- ISSN
- 2667-0267 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC9841357
- OpenAlex
- W4292830232
- Cited by
- 134
- References
- 87
- Citations by year
- 2026: 36 · 2025: 51 · 2024: 34 · 2023: 13
- FWCI
- 2.99
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- JID Innovations (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Oncology › Cutaneous Melanoma Detection and Management
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › AI in cancer detection
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Health Informatics › Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Education
- Keywords
- convolutional neural networks, skin lesion classification, skin cancer prediction, transfer learning, clinical decision support
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review