SASAN: ground truth for the effective segmentation and classification of skin cancer using biopsy images.

Abstract

Objectives: Early skin cancer diagnosis can save lives; however, traditional methods rely on expert knowledge and can be time-consuming. This calls for automated systems using machine learning and deep learning. However, existing datasets often focus on flat skin surfaces, neglecting more complex cases on organs or with nearby lesions.

Methods: This work addresses this gap by proposing a skin cancer diagnosis methodology using a dataset named ASAN that covers diverse skin cancer cases but suffers from noisy features. To overcome the noisy feature problem, a segmentation dataset named SASAN is introduced, focusing on Region of Interest (ROI) extraction-based classification. This allows models to concentrate on critical areas within the images while ignoring learning the noisy features.

Results: Various deep learning segmentation models such as UNet, LinkNet, PSPNet, and FPN were trained on the SASAN dataset to perform segmentation-based ROI extraction. Classification was then performed using the dataset with and without ROI extraction. The results demonstrate that ROI extraction significantly improves the performance of these models in classification. This implies that SASAN is effective in evaluating performance metrics for complex skin cancer cases.

Conclusions: This study highlights the importance of expanding datasets to include challenging scenarios and developing better segmentation methods to enhance automated skin cancer diagnosis. The SASAN dataset serves as a valuable tool for researchers aiming to improve such systems and ultimately contribute to better diagnostic outcomes.