The machine, stronger than the Man? In any case, it seems that computers are more effective than dermatologists in identifying skin cancers . This has been noted by a team of German-French-American researchers, whose work was published Monday, May 28, 2018 in the medical journal Annals of Oncology.

Man versus machine

They have developed an artificial intelligence system that allows a computer to spot, but also to differentiate between skin lesions and benign and worrying moles . For this, they presented to the machine more than 100,000 images to analyze.

At the end of this test, the computer diagnoses were compared with those of 58 dermatology specialists from 17 different countries. As a result, most dermatologists had "done worse" than the computer, scientists say.

95% of detected melanomas

In 100 cases, doctors were able to detect 87% of melanomas with a single basis for a photograph. On close-up images, they could see 89% of them. But the machine proved to be a formidable opponent and beat doctors flat with 95% of detected melanomas, and this from the first series of photos presented.

In a statement, Holger Hänssle, professor of medicine at Heildelberg University in Germany, said the machine had also "made fewer misdiagnosis of seeing melanomas in benign moles". A technological advance that would also "lead to fewer unnecessary operations" according to researchers.

However, there is no question of replacing doctors and dermatology disappears. The goal is to make artificial intelligence "an additional tool," they reassure.

* https://academic.oup.com/annonc