This 'Sweet Spot' Could Improve Melanoma Diagnosis

Source: Science Daily, November 2017

Too much, too little, just right. It might seem like a line from “Goldilocks and the Three Bears," but actually describes an important finding from researchers in Florida Atlantic University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science. They have developed a technique using machine learning — a sub-field of artificial intelligence (AI) — that will enhance computer-aided diagnosis (CADx) of melanoma. Thanks to the algorithm they created — which can be used in mobile apps that are being developed to diagnose suspicious moles — they were able to determine the “sweet spot" in classifying images of skin lesions.
This new finding, published in the Journal of Digital Imaging, will ultimately help clinicians more reliably identify and diagnose melanoma skin lesions, distinguishing them from other types of skin lesions. The research was conducted in the NSF Industry/University Cooperative Research Center for Advanced Knowledge Enablement (CAKE) at FAU and was funded by the Center’s industry members.
Melanoma is a particularly deadly form of skin cancer when left undiagnosed. In the United States alone, there were an estimated 76,380 new cases of melanoma and an estimated 6,750 deaths due to melanoma in 2016. Malignant melanoma and benign skin lesions often appear very similar to the untrained eye. Over the years, dermatologists have developed different heuristic classification methods to diagnose melanoma, but to limited success (65 to 80 percent accuracy). As a result, computer scientists and doctors have teamed up to develop CADx tools capable of aiding physicians to classify skin lesions, which could potentially save numerous lives each year.