# Explainable AI-Driven Detection of Human Monkeypox Using Deep Learning and Vision Transformers: A Comprehensive Analysis

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.01429 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.01429/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 12 of its 38 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Apr 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- ["Why Should I Trust You?": Explaining the Predictions of Any Classifier](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.04938/) (2016)
- [MobileNetV2: Inverted Residuals and Linear Bottlenecks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.04381/) (2018)
- [A Survey of the Recent Architectures of Deep Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.06032/) (2019)
- [Monkeypox Skin Lesion Detection Using Deep Learning Models: A Feasibility Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.03342/) (2022)
- [A Web-based Mpox Skin Lesion Detection System Using State-of-the-art Deep Learning Models Considering Racial Diversity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.14169/) (2023)
- [Monkeypox virus detection using pre-trained deep learning-based approaches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.04444/) (2022)
- [Image Data collection and implementation of deep learning-based model in detecting Monkeypox disease using modified VGG16](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.01862/) (2022)
- [Transfer learning and Local interpretable model agnostic based visual approach in Monkeypox Disease Detection and Classification: A Deep Learning insights](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.05633/) (2022)
- [A Transfer Learning and Explainable Solution to Detect mpox from Smartphones images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18489/) (2023)
- [Ultrafast-and-Ultralight ConvNet-Based Intelligent Monitoring System for Diagnosing Early-Stage Mpox Anytime and Anywhere](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.13492/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Since mpox can spread from person to person, it is a zoonotic viral illness that poses a significant public health concern. It is difficult to make an early clinical diagnosis because of how closely its symptoms match those of measles and chickenpox. Medical imaging combined with deep learning (DL) techniques has shown promise in improving disease detection by analyzing affected skin areas. Our study explore the feasibility to train deep learning and vision transformer-based models from scratch with publicly available skin lesion image dataset. Our experimental results show dataset limitation as a major drawback to build better classifier models trained from scratch. We used transfer learning with the help of pre-trained models to get a better classifier. The MobileNet-v2 outperformed other state of the art pre-trained models with 93.15% accuracy and 93.09% weighted average F1 score. ViT B16 and ResNet-50 also achieved satisfactory performance compared to already available studies with accuracy 92.12% and 86.21% respectively. To further validate the performance of the models, we applied explainable AI techniques.