Melanoma Skin Lesion Classification Using Neural Networks: A systematic review

Abstract

Melanoma is considered a serious health disease and one of the most dangerous and deadly types of skin cancer, due to its unlimited spread. Therefore, detection of this disease must be early and sound due to the high mortality rate. It is driven by researchers' desire to use computers to obtain accurate diagnostic systems to help diagnose and detect this disease early. Given the growing interest in cancer prediction, we have presented this paper, a systematic review of recent developments, using artificial intelligence focusing on melanoma skin lesion detection, particularly systems designed on neural networks. Using the neural networks for melanoma detection could be part of system of assistance for dermatologists who must make the final decision on whether to recommend a biopsy if at least one of the dermatologist's diagnoses and the support system (a helpful method) indicate melanoma or to investigate if another type of cancerous lesion exists. In the latter situation, the system can be trained to recognize distinct types of cancerous skin lesions. On the other hand, the system is incapable of making final decisions. Given neural networks' evolutionary patterns, updated, changed, and integrated networks are expected to increase the performance of such systems. Based on the decision fusion, theoretical and applied contributions were studied using traditional classification algorithms and multiple neural networks. The period 2018-2021 has been focused on new trends. Also for the detection of melanomas, the most popular datasets and how they're being used to train neural network models were presented. Furthermore, the field of research emphasized in order to promote better the subject during different directions. Finally, a research agenda was highlighted to advance the field towards the new trends.