Classification for dermoscopy images using convolutional neural networks based on the ensemble of individual advantage and group decision

Skin cancer is a common and deadly cancer. Dermoscopy is an effective tool for the observation of abnormal skin pigmentation. However, dermoscopy images are extremely complex and present great challenges for diagnosis. Therefore, we proposed a classification method based on the ensemble of individual advantage and group decision in dermoscopy images, including the ensemble strategy of group decision, the ensemble strategy of maximizing individual advantage, and the ensemble strategy of block-integrated voting. We used generative adversarial networks (GANs) to create a balanced sample space to better train convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Through transfer learning, the pretraining CNNs were used for fine-tuning, then the effects of different CNNs on the classification of different categories of dermoscopy images were compared, and the CNNs with better classification effect were selected for the ensemble of different strategies. This study is based on the ISIC 2018 dataset and ISIC 2019 dataset. Compared with the different individual CNNs and the frameworks, the proposed ensemble strategies achieve a better improvement in the evaluation criteria.