Dermatology foundation models
researchScalable, self-supervised vision models pretrained on large, heterogeneous skin-image collections — a shared backbone for diagnosis, segmentation, and retrieval.
University of Basel · University Hospital Basel
The Navarini Lab pursues three largely independent lines of research — artificial intelligence, skin biology, and clinical dermatology. Each stands on its own and answers to its own field; side by side, they give one group an unusually wide view of skin disease.
Digital Dermatology · Department of Biomedical Engineering
Foundation models and computer vision that learn the visual language of skin — built to generalise across every skin tone and to work alongside clinicians rather than replace them.
Scalable, self-supervised vision models pretrained on large, heterogeneous skin-image collections — a shared backbone for diagnosis, segmentation, and retrieval.
An open dataset of pigment-rich paediatric skin disease from Sub-Saharan Africa — 4,901 images from 1,653 patients — closing the diversity gap in dermatology AI. (MICCAI 2024)
Datasets and methods that measure and correct how skin-tone imbalance degrades model performance — so tools work for everyone.
Clinician-plus-AI melanoma screening, validated at planet scale — including independent validation in Korea. (NPJ Digital Medicine 2025)
Generative models that show the future cost of sun exposure — a novel, image-driven route to skin-cancer prevention.
Immunology & skin biology · Department of Biomedicine
Bench research into the immunology and genetics of inflammatory skin disease — dissecting how the epidermis goes wrong, and growing living skin to study it in a dish.
3D cultures of healthy and diseased epidermis — a model of Darier disease and other monogenic keratinocyte disorders, built for high-throughput drug screening.
Why some medications trigger life-threatening skin reactions (SJS/TEN) — tracing IL-1 family cytokines and CD8⁺ T-cell–driven keratinocyte death.
The molecular drivers of a chronic inflammatory disease affecting millions — the antimicrobial peptide LL-37 and JAK/STAT signalling.
Dermatology & Allergology · University Hospital Basel
Patient-facing research in a university dermatology department — prospective imaging trials, large clinical registries, and the everyday care of complex inflammatory and neoplastic skin disease.
3D total-body photography (VECTRA) for early melanoma detection in high-risk patients — prospective evaluation of AI-powered whole-body screening.
Deep clinical phenotyping of generalised pustular psoriasis across 500+ patients in Europe and Egypt — flare patterns, comorbidity, and outcomes.
Contributing to the European Baseline Series — tracking emerging allergens across large multicentre patch-test cohorts.
A few published projects — the kind of thing that happens when computation, biology and the clinic sit in one group.
Dermatology AI had been trained mostly on light skin, so it failed the patients with the least access to a dermatologist. With clinicians in Madagascar, Malawi and Guinea, the lab built PASSION — 4,901 images of pigmented paediatric skin disease — and released it openly.
An algorithm developed on one population, then tested cold against 152,443 images across 70 diseases from a Korean hospital — a rare, honest measure of whether dermatology AI generalises across the planet.
To study Darier disease without a biopsy for every question, the lab grew the epidermis itself — human epidermal organoids from patient cells that reproduce the disease in vitro and open the door to drug screening.
Before putting AI in front of patients' moles, the lab ran a prospective study of what patients and dermatologists actually think about augmented-intelligence melanoma screening — because acceptance decides whether good tools ever get used.
One group across three homes at the University of Basel — the engineering department (DBE), the biomedicine department (DBM), and the clinic (USB).
Principal Investigator · Chair of Dermatology & Allergology, USB
Laboratory secretary · AI & Biomedicine groups
PhD candidate
PhD candidate
PhD candidate
PhD candidate
Collaborators · Hochschule Luzern (HSLU)
Professor of Computer Science, HSLU
Lecturer, HSLU
Lecturer, HSLU
Laboratory Lead
Postdoctoral researcher · epidermal organoids
PhD candidate · organoids & neutrophils
PhD candidate · organoids & immune cells
Laboratory technician
Trial Unit Lead
Senior physician (Leitender Arzt)
Resident physician
Attending physician
Senior study-nurse coordinator
Study manager
Rotation resident
Rotation resident
+ MD / master students. Study enquiries: studien.dermatologie (at) usb.ch
Dermatology & Allergology, University Hospital Basel
Burgfelderstrasse 101 · 4055 Basel · Switzerland