Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on I-SMAC (IoT in Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) (I-SMAC)

IEEE Xplore Part Number:CFP20OSV-ART; ISBN: 978-1-7281-5464-0

A Comparative Study of Melanoma Skin Cancer

Detection in Traditional and Current Image
Processing Techniques
Mr. B. Sreedhar Dr. Manjunath Swamy B.E
Research Scholar Associate Professor
Dept of Computer Science and Engineering Dept of Computer Science and Engineering
Don Bosco Institute of Technology, Bengaluru Don Bosco Institute of Technology, Bengaluru
Karnataka, India Karnataka, India
sreedharburada1@gmail.com manjube24@gmail.com
Dr. M. Sunil Kumar
Professor
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Sree Vidyanikethan Engineering College, Tirupathi
Andhra Pradesh, India
sunilmalchi1@gmail.com

Abstract—S kin cancer is a major health issue in the present day
especially melanoma skin cancer. In general most of the skin
cancers are cured if they are detected in the early stage. With the
rapid growth of skin cancer, there is a need for an automated
computerized diagnosis mechanism of skin cancer in the early
stage is required. Many of the skin cancer images have similar
visual characteristics. It is an important challenging task to
extract the features from the skin cancer images. The automated
computerized diagnosis mechanism helps to improve the accurate
analysis of skin diseases which helps the dermatologists to
accelerate the diagnostic time and improve the better treatment
for the patients. This paper mainly presents the comparative
study on traditional image processing and current technologies of
different image processing techniques for skin cancer image
classification, preprocessing techniques, Feature extraction, and
image segmentation datasets.
Keywords—Image Processing; Skin Cancer; ABCD
Melanoma; Dermoscopy
I. INT RODUCT ION
Skin cancer is common now a day. The statistics of
American Cancer Society, Inc, Surveillance Research in 2020
estimated new Melanoma skin cancer cases are 100,350
among 60,350 are male cases and 43,070 are female cases [1].
The estimated death rate of Skin cancer is 6,850 among 8,030
are male and 3,450 are female, it will increase almost by 2
percent [1]. Generally, three types of skin cancer are (1). Basal
Cell Carcinoma (BCC): It grows from the bottom of the
epidermis in the long term exposure area to sunlight. The
growth rate of skin cancer is slow, so diagnosis is very easy.
Basal Cell Carcinoma can visualize as tiny, shiny, smooth,
waxy or pale lump, red with rough, dry, or scaly patches. (2).
Squamous Cell Carcinoma (SCC): It is another type of skin
cancer. It develops at the outer layer of the skin like Basal Cell
Carcinoma. It spread to the other skin areas at its early stage.
It is the main difference between BCC and SCC. Squamous
Cell Carcinoma can visualize as tiny, smooth, small lumps
with real or brown. (3). Malignant Melanoma (MM): It is the
third type and dangerous skin cancer disease. It happens in the
melanocytes. Melanoma skin cancer visually as asymmetry in
shape with irregular borders and unnatural in color [2].
The growth of skin cancer is rapidly increased. Melanoma
skin cancer image is diagnosed visually using dermoscopy by
the dermatologist. The experienced dermatologist can
diagnosis the image by observation of one of the most
techniques called ABCD rule [4]. The characteristics of
ABCD rule [10] are A – Asymmetry, B – Border irregularity,
C – Color distribution, D – Diameter Length. The growth of
skin cancer cells may outspread into organs and tissues.
Dermoscopy technique is a non-invasive imaging method that
is used to detect melanoma skin diseases.
Among all the skin cancers melanoma is very dangerous
skin cancer. The death rate of melanoma skin cancer is high
rule; compared to other types of skin cancer diseases.
Generally, skin cancer diseas e is diagnosed by the expert
dermatologist (Skin specialist doctor). The dermatologists can
diagnose skin cancer diseases by visually screening the
dermoscopy images. Based on his experience he can diagnose
the type of skin cancer but it is not a 100% guarantee to detect
skin cancer and sometimes it may lead to potential harm. Here
potential harm means, the unnecessary procedure has been
performed such as collecting the skin biopsy for lesions,
sometimes these biopsy results do not turn out as skin cancer.
And sometimes dermatologists not suggest skin biopsy,
resulting in death. Early detection of skin cancer leads to a
decrease in the death rate and also accelerate the diagnostic
time to improve the better treatment for the patients [4].
For detecting the automated melanoma Skin cancer [3] in
medical science many technologies are available. But the
decision making computerized automatic skin cancer detection
is more useful in these days. To better understand the work of
different researchers, a survey is proposed on different
traditional and current technologies of skin cancer detection in
an early stage.

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 Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on I-SMAC (IoT in Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) (I-SMAC)
IEEE Xplore Part Number:CFP20OSV-ART; ISBN: 978-1-7281-5464-0
This paper is organized into: The background knowledge -
Type of Images in section II, Comparative study of traditional
and current technologies of skin cancer Image classification in
section III, Literature Survey in section IV, Conclusion in
section V.
II. BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE – TYPE OF IMAGES
The foremost step in this paper is identifying the type of
image. The survey of this paper mostly collected two different
types of images clinical and dermoscopic images. Clinical
images are generally captured with a digital camera. Clinical
image may have different resolution and angles because the
resolution and angles may depend on the type of digital
camera used. Dermoscopic is a camera-based instrument used
by the dermatologists to diagnosis the skin lesion by using the
dermoscopy [5].
Fig. 1. Dermoscopy Image (Image source:
https://dermnetnz.org/topics/melanoma-in-situ-images/)
III. COMPARATIVE STUDY ON TRADITIONAL AND
CURRENT TECHNOLOGIES OF SKIN CANCER IMAGE
CLASSIFICATION
A. Procedure for Skin cancer image classification in
traditional Technology
The basic procedure for traditional technologies based on
skin cancer image classification is presented in below fig 2.
a) Image Acquisition: Image can be acquired by any
digital camera or by using the dermoscopy. Various databases
are supported for the collection of different type’s skin cancer
images.
b) Image pre-processing: Image pre-processing is to
remove unnecessary artefacts like noise, air bubbles and fain
hair. Skin hair can be removed using various filtering
techniques as median [5], Gaussian Filtering [7]. In addition to
contrast, enhanced filtering can shape out image boarder and
improve the accuracy of image segmentation. The clinical
images require more pre-processing compared to dermoscopy
because it differs with image resolution, lightning condition,
angle of image capture [8].
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c) Image post-processing: Image post-processing is
enhancing the images shape and resizing of image [6].
Karhunen-Loève (KL) transforms histogram equalization and
different kinds of filter are used to achieve the image post-
processing.
d) Image Segmentation: Partitioning of Image is
nothing but disjoint the image into multiple parts with respect
to shape, color, and texture is known as segmentation [9].
Some time segmentation is to remove less importance of the
skin that is to identify the less relevant region from the image
and find the region of interest generally the cancer cell image.
Efficient image segmentation of skin cancer is to improve the
performance of image classification. Image segmentation of
three types:
(i) Pixel Based segmentation: Using Binary
Thresholding, the pixel-based image segmentation identifies a
part of a similar region or an object.
(ii) Edge Based segmentation: The objective of this
segmentation method is to identify the edge pixels to form the
shape of the skin lesion.
(iii) Region-Based segmentation: This method is used
to detect the similar intensity pattern values of the neighbor
pixels. The watershed algorithm is an example of the growing,
merging, and splitting of image regions.
e) Feature extraction: It is the most important
prerequisite of any image classification. It can be extracting
the useful image or image properties from the image segment.
Many features are associated with skin cancer image.
Different types of feature extraction can be categorized those
are:
 ABCD Rule Feature [10] – Asymmetry, Border
irregularity, Color, and Diameter
 Shape Feature – Asymmetry, Compactness,
Diameter
 Color Feature – Different techniques like color
histogram, Color variance, entropy, color
descriptors [11].
 Contour Feature
 Prominent Histogram Feature – Mean Value,
Standard Deviation, entropy, skewness, Kurtosis.
 Texture Feature – Gray Level Co-occurrence
Matrix (GLCM) [12]
 Dermal Feature – epidermis volume, skin
elasticity, skin impedance.

f) Image Classification: An intelligent classification
algorithms such as Feed Forward Neural Networks,
Back Propagation Neural Networks, Decision Tree
Classification, K-Nearest Neighbor and support
vector machine (SVM) is required to classify the skin
cancer image.
655
 Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on I-SMAC (IoT in Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) (I-SMAC)
IEEE Xplore Part Number:CFP20OSV-ART; ISBN: 978-1-7281-5464-0
B. Procedure for skin cancer image classification in current
technology
There is a dramatic improvement of current technologies
in automated skin cancer detection. Various intelligent
algorithms are proposed for solving different classification
problems in the field of medical data science. The basic
procedure for current technologies based on skin cancer image
classification is presented in below Fig 3.
Skin Cancer
Image as Input
Skin Cancer
Image
Preprocessing
Skin Cancer
Image
Segmentation
Intelligent
Algorithms
Skin Cancer
Image
Classification
Fig. 3. The Basic Procedure for Current technologies based on
Skin Cancer Image classification
The input skin cancer image for the Intelligent algorithms
are either clinical or dermoscopy images. Many current
technologies are having inbuilt pre-processing technique. The
next step is image segmentation. Based on the test samples
image has been disjoint into different regions. Apply
intelligent technology for image classification. Melanoma skin
cancer image detection uses Artificial Intelligence, Machine
Learning, and Deep Learning based classification algorithm.
a) Artificial Neural Network (ANN): ANN is also
known as Neural Networks. It has three types of
computational nodes. The block diagram of an artificial neural
network is shown in below fig.4. The first layer of ANN is
called the input layer. All nodes in the input layer have a
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connection with the hidden layer. A typical ANN consists of
multiple hidden layers. The results will appear through the
output layer. The weights are assigned to each link in the
ANN. For our skin cancer detection, the weights are
represented as the number of skin cancer images [13]. The
number of input units connected to the hidden layer depends
on the dataset or database being used. There are two different
types of dataset representation that is supervised learning and
unsupervised learning. Two types of neural networks that are
feedforward and backpropagation neural networks.
Hidden layer Output layer
Input layer
Fig. 4. Block Diagram of Artificial Neural Network
b) Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN):
Convolutional Neural Network is a Deep Learning algorithm.
CNN is a combination of pooling and convolutional layers
followed by fully connected layers. Most researchers are doing
their image classification work on CNN. Because it is
stimulated to take the advantage of secondary structure in data
and the strength of CNN is the local feature of an image which
leads to improving the accuracy for classification [14].
Convolutional Neural Network is one of the preferred
algorithms for image classification.
c) Support Vector Machine (SVM): SVM is a
supervised non-linear classification algorithm. It consists of n-
dimensional hyperplane which has discrete. These data points
are classified into two categories i.e., positive data points and
negative data points. SVM assigns every data point in a
training data set to a class for maximizing separation of a
hyperplane in between them [15]. Support Vector Machine is
both linear and nonlinear classification algorithm.
IV. LITERATURE SURVEY
The literature survey section presents both traditional and
current technology in Melanoma Skin Cancer Detectio n in an
early stage. Table I analyses all the components of skin cancer
image.
656
 Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on I-SMAC (IoT in Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) (I-SMAC)
IEEE Xplore Part Number:CFP20OSV-ART; ISBN: 978-1-7281-5464-0

T able I: Survey Of Traditional And Current Technologies For Skin Cancer Image Detection

References Type of Preprocessing Image Feature Classification Experimental Performance Data Se t

Image Technique Segmentation a Extraction b Algorithm c Result Measure
Nadia Median Filter, Multilevel ABCD Rule T DV Detection of Sensitivity of PH2
Smaoui Morphological T hresholding pigmented skin 87% and
Zghal et.al. Closing, Algorithm lesion and Specificity of
[2] Contrast diagnoses of 92%
Enhancement melanoma
Reda Kasmi Biomedical 11x11 Medial GAC Method ABCD Rule T he selected 94.0 %
et.al. [10] Image Filter, Hair Feature features are good Accuracy
detection - Gabor for automated
filters melanoma skin
cancer detection
Goyal et.al. Dermoscopy Color constancy DeeplabV3+ 89.93% ISIC 2017
[8] Images algorithm, natural (semantic Sensitivity and and
data-augmentation segmentation) 97.94% PH2
and Mask R-CNN Specificity
(instance
segmentation)
Swati Dermoscopy T hresholding GLCM SVM Find out cancerous 94.05%
Jayade et.al. Images T echnique or non cancerous Accuracy
[12] cell
Nazia AlexNET , ECOC SVM CNN are enhancing 86.21% PH2
Hameed Pre-trained the classification ISIC
et.al. [16] CNN Model performance of skin DermIS
lesion DermQuest
Agung W. Dermoscopy CLAHE and 84.79% ISIC 2019
Setiawan Images MSRCR as Accuracy for the
et.al. [17] contrast original Dataset,
enhancements 84.76%
with CNN CLAHE-
enhanced
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MSRCR-
enhanced
dataset
Lokesh Dermoscopy non-invasive T hresholding Method ABCD Rule SVM performance of the 92.5% Accuracy PH2
Singh et.al. Image digitized designed system by
[18] dermoscopic achieved on PH2
model data set
An Gong Dermoscopy trained StyleGANs Decision CNN Experimental ISIC 2019
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StyleGANs images, ISIC 2019 Skin
images 43 pre-trained Lesion Analysis
CNNs T owards Melanoma
Detection
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Pedro M.M. Dermoscopy 27 conventional A comparative Atlas dataset,
Pereira Images segmentation algorithms study between PH2 Dataset,
et.al. [9] Thresholding algorithms several Dermofit
such as HT, IT, KT, LT,
MT, OT, ST, YT, BT,
segmentation Dataset
RT. Fuzzy Methods methods and
such as FT, FL, FC. datasets
Merging Threshold such
as SR Clustering such as
KC, KS, MC, MS
Quantification such as
NQ, AQ, UQ, RM, P M.
Active Contours such as
CV, VV, LM. P attern
Clustering such as LC
Image Segmentationa : HT - Huang Threshold, IT - Iterative Colour, MS - Mean Shift Colour and Spatial, NQ - Neural
Threshold, KT - Kapur Threshold, LT - Li Threshold, MT - Quantization, AQ - Wan Quantifier, UQ - Wu Quantifier,
Moment Threshold, OT - Otsu Threshold, ST - Shanbhag RM - RGB Median Cut, PM - PCT Median Cut, CV - Chan-
Threshold, YT - Yen Threshold, BT - Bradley Threshold, Vese, VV - Chan-Vese Vector, LM - Lankton Mean
RT - Renyi Threshold, FT - Fuzzy Differential Evolution Separation, LC - Local Binary Patterns Clustering. Feature
Entropy, FL - Fuzzy Clustering LevelSet, FC - Fuzzy C- Extractionb : GLCM – Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix,
Means, SR - Statistical Region Merging, KC - K-Means CNN – Convolutional Neural Networks, CLAHE – Contrast
Colour, KS - K-Means Colour and Spatial, MC - Mean Shift Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization, MSRCR –

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 Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on I-SMAC (IoT in Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) (I-SMAC)
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