AI smartphone tool to better diagnose skin cancer, disorders: Study

Researchers have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) system that can accurately classify skin disorders, predict malignancy, and suggest primary treatment options, an advance that may be integrated with smartphones to act as a diagnostic aid for clinicians.

The study, published in the Journal of Integrative Dermatology, noted that the diagnostic accuracy of dermatologists as well as the general public can be significantly improved by using this system.

According to the researchers from Seoul National University in South Korea, skin diseases are common, but visiting a dermatologist to distinguish malignant from benign conditions is difficult in several parts of the world.

"Recently, there have been remarkable advances in the use of AI in medicine. For specific problems, such as distinguishing between melanoma and nevi, AI has shown results comparable to those of human dermatologists," said study co-author Jung-Im Na from the Seoul National University in South Korea.

"However, for these systems to be practically useful, their performance needs to be tested in an environment similar to real practice, which requires classifying malignant versus benign lesion," Na added.

He said such a system also needs to distinguishing skin cancer from numerous other skin disorders including inflammatory and infectious conditions