Automatic Imaging System With Decision Support for Inspection of Pigmented Skin Lesions and Melanoma Diagnosis

Abstract

<para xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> In this paper, we describe an automatic system for inspection of pigmented skin lesions and melanoma diagnosis, which supports images of skin lesions acquired using a conventional (consumer level) digital camera. More importantly, our system includes a decision support component, which combines the outcome of the image classification with context knowledge such as skin type, age, gender, and affected body part. This allows the estimation of the personal risk of melanoma, so as to add confidence to the classification. We found that our system classified images with an accuracy of 86%, with a sensitivity of 94%, and specificity of 68%. The addition of context knowledge was indeed able to point to images that were erroneously classified as benign, albeit not to all of them. </para>