AI outperforms human doctors in spotting skin cancer

In January last year scientists reported that artificial intelligence was almost as effective at identifying skin cancer as dermatologists. In an experiment between a deep learning convolutional neural network (or CNN) and 58 dermatologists, researchers found that human dermatologists accurately identified 86.6 percent of skin cancers from a range of images, compared to 95 percent for the CNN. The study's first author, Holger Haenssle of the University of Heidelberg, said that the CNN missed fewer melanomas, "meaning it had higher sensitivity than the dermatologists". He added that it misdiagnosed fewer benign moles as malignant melanoma, which would ultimately result in less unnecessary surgery. The AI was taught to distinguish dangerous skin lesions from benign ones after being shown more than 100,000 images.