What you created is a version of “am I hot or not” for skin cancer. The idea is constrained to the limitations of your programming capability. Showing a photo and creating 3 buttons with a static response is not very helpful. These are the limits of vibe coding.

I was thinking to train a convnet to accurately classify pictures of moles as normal vs abnormal. The user can take a photo and upload it to a diagnostic website and get a diagnosis.

It doesn’t seem like an overly complex model to develop and there is plenty of data referring to photos that show normal vs abnormal moles.

I wonder why a product hasn’t been developed, where we are using image detection on our phones to actively screen for skin cancer. Seems like a no brainer.

My thinking is there are not enough deaths to motivate the work. Dying from melanoma is nasty.

I like the project! Congrats on the launch.

As I understand it, size is one of the key indicators of melanoma. But in some of these images, it’s difficult to tell whether the mole is 1 mm or 10 mm. I assume your image set doesn’t include size information. If you can find sources with rulers or some kind of scale, that would be very helpful.

Every image with a pen marking is dangerous/cancer. Check.

To my eye most of the basal cell carsinomas looked like everyday rashes, pimples or scratches. My correct rate was under chance. This could be hypochondria inducing for many?

Biggest irony of the thread is the OP and the ones commenting celebrating the tech putting themselves out of the job while contributing it. Eg. a dermatologist who looks at skin conditions -- a very visual skill. They use their skills at that to build an app that people can use to check for skin cancer, rashes, whatever. Now, people have less incentive to see a dermatologist and might miss the zebras (and in fact: people are lazy and tend to hate doctors already so they won't.) Then there's the software engineers here who (even if you're a high level senior engineer) are further moved down the chopping board the better AI gets.

YAY, three cheers for all the soy boys building AI. See you on unemployment soon.

Vibe coding is like spreadsheets.

We take spreadsheet for granted. VisiCalc back in the day unlocked computing for an average person in the same way AI does today. Back then to tabulate some stats you’d need a team of programmers. When spreadsheets became available, anyone could figure out how to essentially program a computer without software background.

It would be interesting to see how spreadsheets failed/succeeded to learn the limits of vibe coding. For example it’s a common meme that you find teams using spreadsheets as databases. Perhaps they are so successful that they end up being misused. Would the same happen with AI coding?

I’ve learned that basal cell carcinoma can look scarily unremarkable!

Would be useful to add some explanation on the defining features that would give it away to a dermatologist.

This is a good use of vibecoding. The main "algorithm" to be implemented is very straightforward , and for the hard stuff, we have an expert.

(spoilers!) here's how to win: everything is cancer, except the common moles and the keratoses.

OP, what are some of the other common options for a spot on the body aside from common moles, cancer, and keratoses? Solar lentigines, freckles, bug bites, eczema? I'm also curious what the actual chance of cancer is given a random mole anywhere on the body, obviously a more involved question.

A few years ago there used to be an ML-based app for Android that could classify photos of lesions that you took with your phone and could recommend you a visit to the dermatologist (or not). Unfortunately it seems to be removed now, the webpage is still live (somewhat): https://emdee.ai/

It was done by a small team in Hungary, with the support of MDs of course. (I would guess that the majority of the work was coordinating with MDs, getting them to teach the software... and collecting photos of lesions. Must have been fun!)

They probably could not monatize it (or were not interested, or it was just too much work for a side hustle)... the sad reality of living in Eastern Europe.

I do think that the idea is perfect, it is non-invasive, but could warn you of a potentially very dangerous condition in time. You don't have to wait for the doctor, or unnecessarily visit them. I would actually pay for this as a service.