Automated Skin Cancer Classification Using VGG16-Based Deep Learning Model

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Monica Cinthya, Wiyli Yustanti, I Kadek Dwi Nuryana, Cendra Devayana Putra, Raymond Wangsa Putra, Dian Permatasari Kusuma Dayu, Alda Ellsa Faradilla, Calycha Irmalia Kurniasari

2025 E3S Web of Conferences Vol. 645 Conference paper Cited by 2 Quartile

Abstract

Melanoma is the most fatal type of skin cancer due to its high potential to metastasize and its early-stage similarity to benign skin lesions, such as common moles. This resemblance often leads to delayed diagnosis and treatment. This study proposes a skin cancer classification model using the VGG-16 architecture through a transfer learning approach. Utilizing the ISIC 2017 dataset, which includes three skin lesion categories such as Melanoma, Nevus, and Seborrheic Keratosis-this research applies preprocessing, segmentation, and feature extraction. The classification stage uses a modified VGG-16 model, achieving the best performance at a 70:30 train-test split with 100 epochs and batch size of 16, resulting in an accuracy of 73.09% and F1-score of 0.71. Evaluation with the ROC curve indicates challenges in distinguishing Melanoma from other lesions due to overlapping patterns. Additionally, the study presents a prototype mobile application for real-time classification, demonstrating the practical implementation of the proposed model. © The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2025.

Affiliations

Faculty of Engineering, Surabaya State University, Surabaya, 60231, Indonesia; Institute of Information Management, School of Management, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, 70101, Taiwan