Objective: To describe the development of a platform for image collection and annotation that resulted in a multi-sourced international image dataset of oral lesions to facilitate the development of automated lesion classification algorithms.
Materials and methods: We developed a web-interface, hosted on a web server to collect oral lesions images from international partners. Further, we developed a customised annotation tool, also a web-interface for systematic annotation of images to build a rich clinically labelled dataset. We evaluated the sensitivities comparing referral decisions through the annotation process with the clinical diagnosis of the lesions.
Results: The image repository hosts 2474 images of oral lesions consisting of oral cancer, oral potentially malignant disorders and other oral lesions that were collected through MeMoSA® UPLOAD. Eight-hundred images were annotated by seven oral medicine specialists on MeMoSA® ANNOTATE, to mark the lesion and to collect clinical labels. The sensitivity in referral decision for all lesions that required a referral for cancer management/surveillance was moderate to high depending on the type of lesion (64.3%-100%).
Conclusion: This is the first description of a database with clinically labelled oral lesions. This database could accelerate the improvement of AI algorithms that can promote the early detection of high-risk oral lesions.
Keywords: access to care; annotation tool; oral cancer; oral lesion image database; oral potentially malignant disorders.
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