To participate, you must be 18 years or older and currently live in the United States. Enterprise accounts (e.g., @business.com, @alumni.university.edu) are not able to contribute.
Images of all skin conditions are helpful — moles, warts or insect bites, or more advanced conditions like psoriasis or eczema. Even if you don’t know what your skin condition is or you think you might not have any, please don’t hesitate to contribute an image.
Yes, please do.
Submitted pictures are checked to make sure that they show a visible skin condition, don’t contain sensitive content, and don’t give away your identity. If these criteria are met, the picture will likely become part of the open access dataset.
There is no monetary compensation for your images. The images and related user-submitted information will be de-identified and placed in an open access dataset that will be openly accessible for uses including research and education.
If you share an image of your skin, you could help scientists, doctors and/or companies develop diagnostic tools, therapies, or products for conditions like yours. Your contribution may also help students of dermatology see more examples of skin conditions and their manifestations across different skin types. This is especially true if you have a rare skin condition or belong to a demographic group that is underrepresented in medical research or education.
Dermatologists and other experts may review the images to assess their quality and suitability for the open access dataset. They won’t make a diagnosis, and you won’t be contacted about any findings. Consult your healthcare provider if you need care for your skin condition.
Your images and any health information you choose to share are de-linked from your Google Account as soon as you submit them. A team of experts then removes any parts of the image that contain information that could identify you (like faces, tattoos, background features or landmarks). To further protect your privacy, the dataset will be released to the public only after a large number of contributions have been collected. This helps ensure that the dataset will have several contributions from people with your demographics and skin condition, and makes it less likely that your images can be singled out.
Yes, this image dataset will be made available on the internet for members of the public to use. This includes researchers, clinicians, developers, students, teachers, companies, or others with an interest in dermatology. Your images will not be attributed to you when the dataset is released.
Please don’t contribute images on behalf of anyone else. If you know someone who might be interested in contributing, send them a link to this project. They will need to be in the United States to participate.
Using a Google Account creates an acknowledgement and record of your consent to contribute to the Skin Condition Image Network (SCIN). Your images are de-linked from your Google Account right after you submit them. Any health information you provide isn’t associated with your identity.
Google may work with vetted contractors to remove spam and any personally identifying information. These third parties do not receive any information about your identity or Google Account.
In order to protect your privacy, any images you provide are immediately de-linked from your Google Account after submitting a contribution. Because of this, we cannot link images to you later and delete them.
Open access means free access to information and unrestricted use of electronic resources for everyone. Google frequently creates and releases open access datasets. The primary goal of these datasets is to stimulate scientific research.
Researchers, clinicians, developers, students, teachers, or anyone else with an interest in dermatology will be able to download the dataset.
The most common use of publicly accessible, large image libraries like SCIN is to train and validate machine learning models that help detect and recognize health conditions. These images could also be used for educational purposes for dermatologists and other clinicians.
It’s important to note that the images may not be restricted to just academic use. People who download the dataset may choose to use the images for commercial, research and development purposes.
With your help, SCIN will contain thousands of images. It will include common skin conditions like eczema, acne, or moles and other conditions like psoriasis or skin infections. The dataset will cover the spectrum of skin types and skin tones, and include images from people of all ages.
As well as images, SCIN may contain additional information such as demographics or symptoms shared by contributors. Any information (including images) will be de-identified to protect contributor privacy.
Google may work with dermatologists or other experts to label or annotate the images in the dataset, including potential diagnoses. These may also be published alongside the images.
Creating open access datasets is a way for Google to support the scientific community, and stimulate research and development. It’s important that these datasets represent the real world as closely as possible. SCIN is a Google Research effort to see if crowdsourcing can help create powerful and representative datasets for public use.
Google Health is committed to helping everyone, everywhere be healthier through products and services that connect and bring meaning to health information. SCIN is a Google Research effort to see if crowdsourcing can help create powerful and representative datasets for public use. Both efforts aim to make health information more accurate and accessible.
Contributors to the dataset consent to Google’s use, sharing, or retention of de-identified images and user-submitted information. Before public release, Google’s access to the data will be limited to quality checks and preparation for release. Once the dataset is released to the public, Google will have access to the images and user-submitted information just like everyone else, and could utilize them for its own research and product development.
Skin conditions can manifest in many ways. The same condition may look different depending on age, gender, skin type and severity. SCIN is looking for contributions from the public so that the image dataset can cover the widest possible range of conditions and include the different ways they appear on the skin.
Potential contributors will see a Google Search Ad asking if they would like to participate. These ads are shown when users type keywords related to dermatology, such as ‘psoriasis’, ‘eczema’ or ‘skin research’.
Google doesn’t use your health information to show you Ads. Google never sells people’s personal information and has strict policies specifically prohibiting personalized ads based on sensitive categories. Based on these policies, the Ads displayed depend on the content of your search query — such as ‘psoriasis images’ — and not on any information about health conditions.