Skin Cancer Classification and Comparison of Pre-trained Models Performance using Transfer Learning

Background: Skin cancer can quickly become fatal. An examination and biopsy of dermoscopic pictures are required to determine if skin cancer is malignant or benign. However, these examinations can be costly. Objective: In this research, we proposed deep learning (DL)-based approach to identify a melanoma, the most dangerous kind of skin cancer. DL is particularly excellent in learning traits and predicting cancer. However, DL requires a vast number of images. Method: We used image augmentation and transferring learning to categorise images into benign and malignant. We used the public ISIC 2020 database to train and test our models. The ISIC 2020 dataset classifies melanoma as malignant. Along with the categorization, the dataset was examined for variation. The training and validation accuracy of three of the best pre-trained models were compared. To minimise the loss, three optimizers were used: RMSProp, SGD, and ADAM. Results: We attained training accuracy of 98.73%, 99.12%, and 99.76% using ResNet, VGG16, and MobileNetV2, respectively. We achieved a validation accuracy of 98.39% using these three pre-trained models. Conclusion: The validation accuracy of 98.39% outperforms the prior pre-trained model. The findings of this study can be applied in medical science to help physicians diagnose skin cancer early and save lives.   Keywords: Deep Learning, ISIC 2020, Pre-trained Model, Skin Cancer, Transfer Learning