Introduction. The purpose of this study is to use deep learning and machine learning to learn and classify patients with cutaneous melanoma with different prognoses and to explore the application value of deep learning in the prognosis of cutaneous melanoma patients. Methods. In deep learning, VGG-19 is selected as the network architecture and learning model for learning and classification. In machine learning, deep features are extracted through the VGG-19 network architecture, and the support vector machine (SVM) model is selected for learning and classification. Compare and explore the application value of deep learning and machine learning in predicting the prognosis of patients with cutaneous melanoma. Result. According to receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and area under the curve (AUC), the average accuracy of deep learning is higher than that of machine learning, and even the lowest accuracy is better than that of machine learning. Conclusion. As the number of learning increases, the accuracy of machine learning and deep learning will increase, but in the same number of cutaneous melanoma patient pathology maps, the accuracy of deep learning will be higher. This study provides new ideas and theories for computational pathology in predicting the prognosis of patients with cutaneous melanoma.