Description

Malignant melanoma has become a major worldwide health problem. In North America, melanoma is one of the fastest growing cancers with an average increase in incidence of 3% per annum since 1980. The most effective method to combat the disease is early detection, and the development of computerized diagnostic devices helps dermatologists in detecting the disease accurately. Most of these devices employ special optics to penetrate the outer skin layers and reveal the subsurface area of the skin. Diagnosis of a lesion is based on the analysis of a colour subsurface image. However, such subsurface technology cannot perceive one important skin property, skin roughness, which is used as the key diagnostic factor to differentiate malignant melanoma from seborrheic keratosis, a common benign lesion. In this CIHR Proof of Principle grant proposal, we propose to upgrade our recent invention of a laser speckle imaging device, which was developed with the funding from the Canadian Dermatology Foundation, with a conventional colour CCD camera. The new device is capable of capturing surface roughness and the subsurface view of the skin. Then we will test the effectiveness of the upgraded prototype on melanoma detection in clinical settings on a large group of skin patients. In addition, we will conduct a market study to identify the potential customers for the diagnostic device and solicit their interest levels. We anticipate the upgraded prototype will improve melanoma diagnostic accuracy, and, ultimately, it will ease the load of dermatologists and our health care system.

Principal Investigator

Research Team

 Samuel Abraham

 Patrick Rebstein

Funding Agency

 Canadian Dermatology Foundation

 Canadian Institutes of Health Research