DermoAI-CNN: Leveraging GANs, Mask R-CNN, and Attention Mechanisms for Enhanced Skin Disease Analysis

Abstract The study aims to develop an effective and efficient deep learning model for detecting skin diseases, as skin diseases rank as the world’s number one health problem. Besides, cancers and dermatological anomalies should be diagnosed at an early stage, so that subsequent treatment can be efficient and complication-free. The existing methods of diagnosis are associated with lower precision and, in most cases, are inefficient, which can be attributed to the lack of effective data augmentation, segmentation techniques, and improved feature extraction. In this paper, a general framework is introduced that uses Generative Adversarial Networks for data augmentation, Mask R-CNN for precise segmentation, and a tailored multilayer Convolutional Neural Network with an attention mechanism incorporated into it to classify 23 skin disease classes using 25,250 images, among them 5,750 generated by GAN, to balance underrepresented classes. The accuracy attained was 97.30%, which was much better than that reported in earlier studies, which ranged from 85 to 92. The metrics, including an accuracy of 95.65%, a recall of 97.09%, and an F1-score of 96.98%, were used to assess the system’s performance in classifying invisible dermatological images. The scalable system provides explanations that support real-time diagnosis, preventing delays and acute health costs. The findings fully fulfil the capabilities of deep learning in dermatology, as the initial diagnosis of the skin disease is accurate, accessible and efficient.