Next-generation approach to skin disorder prediction employing hybrid deep transfer learning

Introduction: Skin diseases significantly impact individuals' health and mental wellbeing. However, their classification remains challenging due to complex lesion characteristics, overlapping symptoms, and limited annotated datasets. Traditional convolutional neural networks (CNNs) often struggle with generalization, leading to suboptimal classification performance. To address these challenges, this study proposes a Hybrid Deep Transfer Learning Method (HDTLM) that integrates DenseNet121 and EfficientNetB0 for improved skin disease prediction. Methods: The proposed hybrid model leverages DenseNet121's dense connectivity for capturing intricate patterns and EfficientNetB0's computational efficiency and scalability. A dataset comprising 19 skin conditions with 19,171 images was used for training and validation. The model was evaluated using multiple performance metrics, including accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score. Additionally, a comparative analysis was conducted against state-of-the-art models such as DenseNet121, EfficientNetB0, VGG19, MobileNetV2, and AlexNet. Results: The proposed HDTLM achieved a training accuracy of 98.18% and a validation accuracy of 97.57%. It consistently outperformed baseline models, achieving a precision of 0.95, recall of 0.96, F1-score of 0.95, and an overall accuracy of 98.18%. The results demonstrate the hybrid model's superior ability to generalize across diverse skin disease categories. Discussion: The findings underscore the effectiveness of the HDTLM in enhancing skin disease classification, particularly in scenarios with significant domain shifts and limited labeled data. By integrating complementary strengths of DenseNet121 and EfficientNetB0, the proposed model provides a robust and scalable solution for automated dermatological diagnostics.