PASSION for Dermatology: Bridging the Diversity Gap with Pigmented Skin Images from Sub-Saharan Africa

MICCAI 2024

Philippe Gottfrois7,8, Fabian Gröger5,8, Faly Herizo Andriambololoniaina4, Ludovic Amruthalingam5, Alvaro Gonzalez-Jimenez8, Christophe Hsu7 Agnes Kessy6 Simone Lionetti5 Daudi Mavura6 Wingston Ng'ambi3, Dingase Faith Ngongonda1 Marc Pouly5 Mendrika Fifaliana Rakotoarisaona4, Fahafahantsoa Rapelanoro Rabenja4 Ibrahima Traoré2 Alexander Navarini5

1 Bwaila Hospital Department of Dermatology,
2 Health Economics and Policy Unit, Department of Health Systems and Policy, Kamuzu University of Health Sciences, Lilongwe, Malawi
3 Dermatology Clinic Konakry,
4 Laboratoire d’Accueil et de Recherche en santé publique spécialisé en TIC,
5 Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts,
6 Regional Dermatology Training Center, Moshi,
7 University Hospital Basel,
8 University of Basel,
Paper arXiv BibTeX Code Data

Abstract

Africa faces a huge shortage of dermatologists, with less than one per million people. This is in stark contrast to the high demand for dermatologic care, with 80% of the paediatric population suffering from largely untreated skin conditions. The integration of AI into healthcare sparks significant hope for treatment accessibility, especially through the development of AI-supported teledermatology. Current AI models are predominantly trained on white-skinned patients and do not generalize well enough to pigmented patients. The PASSION project aims to address this issue by collecting images of skin diseases in Sub-Saharan countries with the aim of open-sourcing this data. This dataset is the first of its kind, consisting of 1,653 patients for a total of 4,901 images. The images are representative of telemedicine settings and encompass the most common paediatric conditions: eczema, fungals, scabies, and impetigo. We also provide a baseline machine learning model trained on the dataset and a detailed performance analysis for the subpopulations represented in the dataset. The project website can be found at https://passionderm.github.io/.

Dataset

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BibTeX

@article{gottfrois2024PASSION,
  author    = {Philippe Gottfrois and Fabian Gröger and Herizo Andriambololoniaina and Ludovic Amruthalingam and Mendrika Rakotoarisaona and Alvaro Gonzalez-Jimenez and Simone Lionetti and Wingston Ng'ambiand Christophe Hsu and Agnes Kessy and Marc Pouly and Daudi Mavura and Dingase Faith Ngongonda and Ibrahima Traoré and Rabenja Rapelanoro and Alexander Navarini},
  title     = {PASSION for Dermatology: Bridging the Diversity Gap with Pigmented Skin Images from Sub-Saharan Africa},
  journal   = {MICCAI},
  year      = {2024},
}