Expert-Level Diagnosis of Nonpigmented Skin Cancer by Combined Convolutional Neural Networks

Abstract

In comparison with inspection with the unaided eye, dermoscopy (dermatoscopy¹) improves the accuracy of the diagnosis of pigmented skin lesions.² The improvement of dermoscopy is most evident for small and inconspicuous melanomas³ and for pigmented basal cell carcinoma.⁴ Because dermoscopic criteria are more specific and the number of differential diagnoses is significantly lower, pigmented skin lesions are easier to diagnose than nonpigmented lesions. The most common types of skin cancers, however, are usually nonpigmented. A previous study showed that dermoscopy also improves the accuracy of the diagnosis of nonpigmented lesions, although the improvement was less pronounced than for pigmented lesions.⁵ The proportion of correct diagnoses by expert raters increased from 41.3% with the unaided eye to 52.7% with dermoscopy. The improvement of nonexperts was less pronounced.