A Novel Deep Learning Framework Approach for

Psoriasis Disease Detection

Sakshi Srivastava1*, Vaishali Chaudhary2

1
Computer Science and Engineering Department, Graphic Era Deemed to be
University, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India
2
Department of Biotechnology, Graphic Era Deemed to be University, Dehradun,
Uttarakhand, India.

sakshigunja@gmail.com

Abstract. Skin is the most crucial part of human body and therefore a normal skin is very
important for healthy living of a person. However, it suffers from many dermatological
problems. One of such skin disease is psoriasis. The study proposes a novel deep learning
framework which compares the different state-of-the-art deep learning algorithms on the
basis of various parameters like AUC, CA, Precision, F1 and Recall in three different
scenarios namely, VGG-16, VGG-19 and Inception v3. Based on the results obtained
VGG-19 is chosen as the feature extractor and Logistic Regression as the classifier. An
AUC value of 0.990 and CA of 94.2% is obtained.

Keywords. Psoriasis, Deep learning, VGG-16, VGG-19, Inception v3.

1 Introduction

Skin is the largest organ or part of human body. It is also one of the five senses
which is responsible for the touches. It also separates the inside organs of the human
body from the outside environment. It also helps in regulating the body temperature
and protects us from various bacteria, viruses and other insects [1]. However, finding
a healthy skin in this world is a very difficult task as millions of people are facing
various dermatological diseases like acne, psoriasis, rosacea, pemphigus, atopic
dermatitis, etc. These skin diseases can be identified by analyzing the symptoms as
burning sensation, redness, swelling, allergies, etc.
In this paper, we have considered working on the Psoriasis disease. Psoriasis is a
genetic chronic, inflammatory disease which causes scaling and swelling on the skin
[2]. It causes thick patches of red, swelled skin which may cause burning sensations
and stiffness. These silvery scaled patches can result in itching and sore feel [1]. It can
be caused on elbows, knees, armpits, hands, feet, nails, legs, back, scalp and even
behind the ear. It also results in mental sickness, anxiety and sometimes depression.
Therefore, it is important to diagnose it in earlier stages only for proper treatment.
Psoriasis is basically of six types as listed below. Figure 1 shows different types of
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psoriasis.
1.1 Plaque Psoriasis
It is the most common type of psoriasis caused. It is generally found in 80% of
the population suffering from psoriasis. Thick red patches are formed on the skin of
elbow, knee, scalp and lower back.

1.2 Guttate Psoriasis

It is found in the 10% of the population and is the second most common type of
psoriasis. In this type of psoriasis, small, separate and drop-shaped red spots are
formed of the skin. Guttate psoriasis results in strep throat, infection, stress and
anxiety.

1.3 Flexural or Inverse Psoriasis

It generally appears in the parts of body where the skin gets folded such as under
the breasts or armpits due to the occurrence of sweat and moisture. Red, shiny and
smooth patch is formed in the skinfold.

1.4 Pustular Psoriasis

It occurs in the form of pustules surrounded by red skin in the isolated areas of
the body which can combine together to form scaling of the skin.

1.5 Psoriatic Arthritis

It is the most painful type of psoriasis and has almost no cure. It is common in
10-30% of the population suffering from psoriasis.

1.6 Erthyrodermic Psoriasis

It is also known as exfoliative psoriasis and is a rare type of psoriasis. It is
visible as severe burns and the body is not able to control the temperature.

Plaque Guttate Flexural or Inverse

Pustular Psoriatic Arthritis Erthyrodermic

Fig 1. Types of Psoriasis
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2 Literature Review

Nidhal K. Al Abbadi et al. used skin color and texture features in order to detect
whether a person in having psoriasis skin disease or not.The image was fed to the feed
forward neural networks as an input and feed forward-NN was able to classify the
image by discriminating between psoriasis infected skin and healthy normal skin [2].
Artificial Neural Network was used for detecting 9 types of dermatological
diseases with an accuracy of 90%. 775 skin images were taken as an input to ANN for
training the model [5]. K-means clustering, color gradient techniques and feed
forward backpropagation artificial neural networks were used for detecting 6 types of
dermatological diseases. Classification accuracy of 94.0146% was obtained [6].
Pigmented Skin Lesion (PSL) image results were firstly analyzed, preprocessed,
segmented and feature extraction was done by Damilola A. Okuboyejo et al and then
the lesion images were classified.The ABCD rule proposed by Stolz et al. in 1994
[11] was compared with the state-of-the-art machine learning algorithm like logisitic
regression [9].
Different image processing techniques were applied to the sample images of skin
cancer, psoriasis and dermatophytosis and then feature extraction was done. Two-
level classifiers were then used to classify the images into different dermatological
diseases on the basis of different parameters like Entropy, Texture index and
Correlation factor [8].
Vinayshekhar Bannihatti Kumar et al. combined Computer Vision techniques
like image preprocessing and feature extraction with Machine learning
models(Decision Tree, KNN and ANN) in order to identify different skin diseases.
The proposed work was able to correctly detect dermatological diseases with an
accuracy of up-to 95% [7].
Harshit Jain et al. Used Convolutional Neural Network as the deep learning
technique for detecting leprosy or Hansen's ailment disease. Dermnet Nz datasets
were fed as an input to the CNN and classification was done.Their model was able to
classify images into infected and non-infected skin with an accuracy of 91.6% [3].
Researchers have used different deep learning and computer vision based
techniques for predicting various dermatological diseases. Sourav Kumar Patnaik et
al. used InceptionV3, InceptionResnetV2 and MobileNet (with modifications)
architectures in order to classify the human body parts present in the image into the
disease from which it is infected by.They were able to predict 20 diseases with an
accuracy of 88% [4]. Image processing techniques were used in order to enhance the
skin disease images in order to remove unwanted noise.Then an ANN able to
automatically diagnosing skin diseases from the sample images [8].

3 Dataset Collection

For training any machine or deep learning model, an appropriate dataset is a

must. A dataset can be in the form of images, csv files, etc. In our work, we’ve
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collected images of psoriasis infected skin images and that of a normal healthy skin.
A total of 312 images are present in the dataset, out of which 154 images are of
psoriasis infected skin and 158 of normal healthy skin. This image dataset is then used
for training the different classifiers and hence predicting the results.

4 Proposed Work

We have considered three different scenarios in our work. These scenarios are
considered on the basis of different image embedding and feature extraction style.
The model is trained under each scenario and then 8 different classifiers namely
Random Forest, Support Vector Machine(SVM), KNN(K-Nearest Neighbour), Neural
Network(NN), Stochastic Gradient Descent(SGD), AdaBoost, Logistic
Regression(LR) and Naive Bayes are used for the classifying the image into infected
with psoriasis and healthy normal skin.
4.1 Scenario 1
In this scenario we’ve considered a VGG-16 image embedding architecture
environment. It is basically a ConvNet (Convolutional Network) model. Multiple
convolutional layers are used on which the image is passed. 3×3 filters are used and 3
fully connected layers are present [12]. Logistic Regression gives the best accuracy in
this case. We obtain an AUC value of 0.983 and CA of 0.932 using Logistic
Regression as the classifier.
4.2 Scenario 2
Here, we’ve considered an Inception v3 as the image embedding architecture
environment. It consists of a 42 layer deep learning network which helps in reducing
the chances of error in the classification. The best accuracy is obtained using Logisitic
Regression as the classifier. An AUC value of 0.987 and CA of 0.935 is obtained.
4.3 Scenario 3 (Proposed Approach)
In this case, VGG-19 [11] is considered as the image embedding architecture
environment. It consists of 19 deep networking layers and can therefore classify
images in a better way. The input size fore the image in this case is 224×224.
Out of all the 8 classifiers used Logistic Regression gives the best accuracy. It is a
statistical model and is a form of binary regression. It uses logistic function “(1)” or
sigmoid function. Logistic function takes any real value (value) and maps it into a
value between 0 and 1.

(1)
For VGG-19, Logistic Regression gives an AUC value of 0.990 and CA value of
0.942.

5 Result and Discussion

Three scenarios namely VGG-16, Inception v3 and VGG-19 are considered. Out
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of these, VGG-19 and Logistic Regression is chosen as the proposed approach

environment because it gives the maximum classification accuracy (CA) of 94.2%
and area under curve (AUC) value of 0.990. More the AUC value is closer to 1, better
is the overall performance of the model. ). 0.990 is very close to 1 therefore the
overall performance of the proposed model is very high.

Fig 2. The proposed methodology

TABLE 1 ACCURACY ASSESSMENT

Model Classifier AUC CA F1 Precision Recall

Scenario 3 (Proposed Approach)

VGG 19 Logisitic 0.990 0.942 0.942 0.942 0.942
Regression

VGG 19 Neural 0.971 0.939 0.939 0.939 0.939

Network
VGG 19 SGD 0.936 0.935 0.935 0.936 0.935
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VGG 19 kNN 0.969 0.910 0.910 0.911 0.910

VGG 19 SVM 0.981 0.894 0.893 0.900 0.894

VGG 19 Naive Bayes 0.901 0.874 0.874 0.877 0.874

VGG 19 Random 0.951 0.874 0.874 0.876 0.874

Forest
VGG 19 AdaBoost 0.803 0.803 0.803 0.803 0.803

Scenario 2
Inception v3 Logisitic 0.987 0.935 0.935 0.936 0.935
Regression

Inception v3 SVM 0.980 0.923 0.923 0.923 0.923

Inception v3 SGD 0.922 0.923 0.923 0.923 0.923

Inception v3 Neural 0.973 0.919 0.919 0.921 0.919

Network
Inception v3 kNN 0.945 0.881 0.880 0.882 0.881

Inception v3 Naive Bayes 0.906 0.884 0.884 0.887 0.884

Inception v3 Random 0.881 0.868 0.868 0.868 0.868

Forest

Inception v3 AdaBoost 0.831 0.832 0.832 0.835 0.832

Scenario 1
VGG 16 Logisitic 0.983 0.932 0.932 0.932 0.932
Regression

VGG 16 SVM 0.982 0.923 0.923 0.923 0.923

VGG 16 Neural 0.963 0.916 0.916 0.917 0.916

Network
VGG 16 SGD 0.912 0.913 0.913 0.914 0.913

VGG 16 Random 0.950 0.906 0.906 0.906 0.906

Forest
VGG 16 kNN 0.959 0.884 0.884 0.887 0.884
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VGG 16 Naive Bayes 0.881 0.858 0.858 0.858 0.858

VGG 16 AdaBoost 0.829 0.829 0.829 0.829 0.829

The overall performance of the framework is evaluated by plotting the

ROC(Receiver Operating Characteristics) curve for the infected and non-infected
classification done by the 8 different classifiers used (Logistic Regression, SVM,
SGD, Random Forest, Naive Bayes, Adaboost, Neural Network and kNN). ROC
curve is a probability curve which depicts FPR(False Positive Rate) “1-specificity”
value on the x-axis and TPR (Total Positive Rate) “sensitivity” on the y-axis.

Fig 3. ROC curve for different classifiers used in the case of infected skin images.

Fig 4. ROC curve for different classifiers used in the case of disinfected or healthy skin images.
6 Conclusion

Psoriasis is a very painful disease hence it is necessary to identify it as early as

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possible. This study employs a novel deep learning framework approach for
predicting the infected and non-infected skin on the basis of the provided dataset.
Three scenarios are considered on the basis of different feature extraction techniques
namely, VGG-16, VGG-19 and Inception v3 inside which 8 different classifiers are
used for classifying the skin images. On the basis of CA and AUC value obtained in
the three scenarios, VGG-19 is chosen as the image embedder and Logistic
Regression as the classifier as it classifies images with maximum CA of 94.2% and
AUC values of 0.990.

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