# CIRCLe: Color Invariant Representation Learning for Unbiased Classification of Skin Lesions

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.13528 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.13528/

## Key facts

- Cited by 17 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 25 of its 60 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Aug 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [Densely Connected Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.06993/) (2016)
- [MobileNetV2: Inverted Residuals and Linear Bottlenecks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.04381/) (2018)
- [Equality of Opportunity in Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02413/) (2016)
- [Searching for MobileNetV3](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02244/) (2019)
- [StarGAN: Unified Generative Adversarial Networks for Multi-Domain Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.09020/) (2017)
- [Skin Lesion Analysis Toward Melanoma Detection 2018: A Challenge Hosted by the International Skin Imaging Collaboration (ISIC)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.03368/) (2019)
- [Domain Generalization via Invariant Feature Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1301.2115/) (2013)
- [Skin Lesion Analysis Toward Melanoma Detection: A Challenge at the 2017 International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI), Hosted by the International Skin Imaging Collaboration (ISIC)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.05006/) (2017)
- [BCN20000: Dermoscopic Lesions in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.02288/) (2019)
- [Evaluating Deep Neural Networks Trained on Clinical Images in Dermatology with the Fitzpatrick 17k Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.09957/) (2021)
- [CheXclusion: Fairness gaps in deep chest X-ray classifiers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.00827/) (2020)
- [A Patient-Centric Dataset of Images and Metadata for Identifying Melanomas Using Clinical Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.07360/) (2020)
- [Algorithmic Fairness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.09784/) (2020)
- [Disparities in Dermatology AI: Assessments Using Diverse Clinical Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.08006/) (2021)
- [A deep learning system for differential diagnosis of skin diseases](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.05382/) (2019)
- [PAD-UFES-20: a skin lesion dataset composed of patient data and clinical images collected from smartphones](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.00478/) (2020)
- [FairPrune: Achieving Fairness Through Pruning for Dermatological Disease Diagnosis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02110/) (2022)
- [Fairness in Cardiac MR Image Analysis: An Investigation of Bias Due to Data Imbalance in Deep Learning Based Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12387/) (2021)
- [Domain Invariant Representation Learning with Domain Density Transformations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.05082/) (2021)
- [Detecting Melanoma Fairly: Skin Tone Detection and Debiasing for Skin Lesion Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.02832/) (2022)
- [Single-domain Generalization in Medical Image Segmentation via Test-time Adaptation from Shape Dictionary](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.14467/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [Domain Generalization for Medical Image Analysis: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08598/) (2023)
- [Fast Diffusion-Based Counterfactuals for Shortcut Removal and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14223/) (2023)
- [Addressing Fairness Issues in Deep Learning-Based Medical Image Analysis: A Systematic Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.13177/) (2022)
- [Are Sex-based Physiological Differences the Cause of Gender Bias for Chest X-ray Diagnosis?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.05129/) (2023)
- [GIST: Generating Image-Specific Text for Fine-grained Object Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.11315/) (2023)
- [Prompt-driven Latent Domain Generalization for Medical Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.03002/) (2024)
- [Investigating the Quality of DermaMNIST and Fitzpatrick17k Dermatological Image Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.14497/) (2024)
- [Learning Color Equivariant Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09588/) (2024)
- [Assessing the Generalizability of Deep Neural Networks-Based Models for Black Skin Lesions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.00517/) (2023)
- [APPLE: Adversarial Privacy-aware Perturbations on Latent Embedding for Unfairness Mitigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05114/) (2024)
- [Enhancing Fairness in Skin Lesion Classification for Medical Diagnosis Using Prune Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.00745/) (2025)
- [Evaluating Fairness and Mitigating Bias in Machine Learning: A Novel Technique using Tensor Data and Bayesian Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.11627/) (2025)
- [A Hypertoroidal Covering for Perfect Color Equivariance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.04256/) (2026)
- [The Impact of Skin Tone Label Granularity on the Performance and Fairness of AI Based Dermatology Image Classification Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.11184/) (2025)
- [Fitzpatrick Thresholding for Skin Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.06655/) (2025)
- [Mitigating Individual Skin Tone Bias in Skin Lesion Classification through Distribution-Aware Reweighting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.08733/) (2025)
- [Exploring the Impact of Skin Color on Skin Lesion Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.29694/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

While deep learning based approaches have demonstrated expert-level performance in dermatological diagnosis tasks, they have also been shown to exhibit biases toward certain demographic attributes, particularly skin types (e.g., light versus dark), a fairness concern that must be addressed. We propose CIRCLe, a skin color invariant deep representation learning method for improving fairness in skin lesion classification. CIRCLe is trained to classify images by utilizing a regularization loss that encourages images with the same diagnosis but different skin types to have similar latent representations. Through extensive evaluation and ablation studies, we demonstrate CIRCLe's superior performance over the state-of-the-art when evaluated on 16k+ images spanning 6 Fitzpatrick skin types and 114 diseases, using classification accuracy, equal opportunity difference (for light versus dark groups), and normalized accuracy range, a new measure we propose to assess fairness on multiple skin type groups.