Source: AJMC, May 2025
Key Takeaways
- The dual-modal technique combining OCT and Raman spectroscopy achieved 96.9% accuracy in differentiating melanoma from benign lesions.
- Early melanoma diagnosis is critical, with a 99% 5-year survival rate if detected early, dropping to 35% if metastasized.
- Current visual diagnostic methods are limited by clinician expertise, necessitating more reliable, non-invasive techniques.
A new dual-modal, non-invasive detection technique could make it easier—and faster—to differentiate between melanoma skin cancer and benign lesions.
The combination of optical coherence tomography (OCT) and Raman spectroscopy achieved 96.9% accuracy in differentiating melanoma and benign lesions when paired with a machine learning algorithm in a new study. The method also had an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.99. The findings were reported in the Journal of Biophotonics.