SkinMarkNet: an automated approach for prediction of monkeyPox using image data augmentation with deep ensemble learning models

Monkeypox, a rare but potentially fatal viral disease, poses a significant public health challenge due to its potential for outbreaks and complications. Detecting monkeypox lesions early and accurately is vital to effectively manage and control the disease. This study introduces a novel method for classifying monkeypox lesions, employing data augmentation methods and a framework based on an ensemble of three transfer learning models called "SkinMarkNet". The dataset used in this research consists of skin lesion images collected from the Kaggle data repository, encompassing diverse demographics and lesion characteristics. This research uses image data augmentation techniques to tackle the scarcity of annotated data. This augmentation enriches the training dataset, thereby improving the model’s ability to perform effectively. Moreover, the novelty of this research work lies in the usage of three popular transfer learning models(Inception, Xception, and ResNet) for feature extraction and ensemble learning. The SkinMarkNet achieves promising results showing an accuracy of 90.615% for monkeypox lesion classification, outperforming traditional machine learning and deep learning methods utilized in recent research works. In addition, thorough comparative analysis is done with machine learning models and contemporary approaches to validate the efficacy of the proposed method. Overall, the findings underscore the potential of leveraging advanced deep learning architectures and data augmentation strategies for improving monkeypox lesion classification, thereby facilitating early diagnosis and intervention in clinical settings and public health surveillance efforts.