Dermascanner plus: Half automatic computer assisted full body skin imaging system for dermatology

Abstract

Prevention is an essential prerequisite to overcome the global burden of cancer. Skin cancer is a prevailing problem for societies. Dermatologists are the only group of specialist doctors appropriately trained for skin cancer detection. With the naked eye already most of melanocytic and non-melanocytic skin cancers can be detected. Further security and enhancement of detection rate is assisted by dermoscopy and in addition video dermoscopy. Patients having a large amount of melanocytic nevi and those suffering from nevus dysplastic syndrome need regular follow-up associated with a complete documentation by hand written methods, drawings and/or single or multi lesion photography. There is an increasing need to develop computer assisted full body skin imaging to support doctors and to reduce workload. It was the aim of our interdisciplinary group of dermatologists, specialists in computer visualistics, medical device manufacturer and automation system specialists to develop a physician assisting half automated full body scanning imaging system. Furthermore, a doctor’s working place for reviewing the online and offline produced pictures including data files of case history, dermpath and surgery records and procedures and decisions steps recording was developed. The automatic recognition of pigmented lesions is classified in three categories a. suspicious b. not suspicious, and, c. doubtful/no decison. The classification is based on a thesaurus of classified lesions by independent experienced dermatologists and stabilized by dermatopathological support of all types of lesions. The device is based on a scanner cabin in which according to the construction type the patient is stepwise rotating and more than 30 different imaging fields of the body surface are documented by high power cameras. A specific computer visualistic software has been developed to reproduce the data files of the actual situation and to compare with preexisting data files. A clinical trial for validation of the system is running