Automated technology with combined imaging and machine learning to detect early melanoma India Live Today

Washington, Dec 26: Researchers have developed an automated technology that combines imaging with digital analysis and machine learning to help physicians detect melanoma at its early stages. People with melanoma often have mole-looking growths on their skin that tend to be irregular in shape and colour and can be hard to tell apart from benign ones, making the disease difficult to diagnose. "There is a real need for standardisation across the field of dermatology in how melanomas are evaluated," said James Krueger, Professor at Rockefeller University in the US. "Detection through screening saves lives but is very challenging visually, and even when a suspicious lesion is extracted and biopsied, it is confirmed to be melanoma in only about 10 per cent of cases," said Krueger. In the new approach, images of lesions are processed by a series of computer programmes that extract information about the number of colours present in a growth and other quantitative data.