Principles of skin cancer detection in image processing: Challenges and techniques

Skin cancer is most common and widespread type of cancer. Fortunately, its early diagnosis assists to prevent and cure several cases and increase the possibilities of reducing its dangerous effect. However, proper detection of skin cancer especially malignant melanoma in its early stages is still challenging. Image processing is a good choice for skin cancer early detection. Image processing techniques for skin cancer detection commonly include several stages such as pre-processing to enhance images, segment the interest regions to extract significant features, and finally perform classification process. This paper introduces the principles of skin cancer detection in image processing and addresses the challenges of each stage and the common techniques used in analysis.