Generative Adversarial Network for Personalized Art Therapy in Melanoma Disease Management

Melanoma is the most lethal type of skin cancer. Patients are vulnerable to mental health illnesses which can reduce the effectiveness of the cancer treatment and the patients adherence to drug plans. It is crucial to preserve the mental health of patients while they are receiving treatment. However, current art therapy approaches are not personal and unique to the patient. We aim to provide a well-trained image style transfer model that can quickly generate unique art from personal dermoscopic melanoma images as an additional tool for art therapy in disease management of melanoma. Visual art appreciation as a common form of art therapy in disease management that measurably reduces the degree of psychological distress. We developed a network based on the cycle-consistent generative adversarial network for style transfer that generates personalized and unique artworks from dermoscopic melanoma images. We developed a model that converts melanoma images into unique flower-themed artworks that relate to the shape of the lesion and are therefore personal to the patient. Further, we altered the initial framework and made comparisons and evaluations of the results. With this, we increased the options in the toolbox for art therapy in disease management of melanoma. The development of an easy-to-use user interface ensures the availability of the approach to stakeholders. The transformation of melanoma into flower-themed artworks is achieved by the proposed model and the graphical user interface. This contribution opens a new field of GANs in art therapy and could lead to more personalized disease management.