MelanomaNet: Explainable Deep Learning for Skin Lesion Classification
This work addresses the need for interpretable AI in clinical dermatology to potentially increase trust and adoption, though it is incremental as it combines existing interpretability methods.
The authors tackled the problem of limited clinical adoption of deep learning for skin lesion classification due to lack of interpretability by developing MelanomaNet, an explainable system that achieved 85.61% accuracy and a weighted F1 score of 0.8564 on the ISIC 2019 dataset while providing clinically meaningful explanations.
Automated skin lesion classification using deep learning has shown remarkable accuracy, yet clinical adoption remains limited due to the "black box" nature of these models. We present MelanomaNet, an explainable deep learning system for multi-class skin lesion classification that addresses this gap through four complementary interpretability mechanisms. Our approach combines an EfficientNet V2 backbone with GradCAM++ attention visualization, automated ABCDE clinical criterion extraction, Fast Concept Activation Vectors (FastCAV) for concept-based explanations, and Monte Carlo Dropout uncertainty quantification. We evaluate our system on the ISIC 2019 dataset containing 25,331 dermoscopic images across 9 diagnostic categories. Our model achieves 85.61% accuracy with a weighted F1 score of 0.8564, while providing clinically meaningful explanations that align model attention with established dermatological assessment criteria. The uncertainty quantification module decomposes prediction confidence into epistemic and aleatoric components, enabling automatic flagging of unreliable predictions for clinical review. Our results demonstrate that high classification performance can be achieved alongside comprehensive interpretability, potentially facilitating greater trust and adoption in clinical dermatology workflows. The source code is available at https://github.com/suxrobgm/explainable-melanoma