All Digital Home Use System for Mole Monitoring

描述（由申请人提供）：

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The incidence of skin cancer and melanoma continues to rise rapidly in the United States. The best defense against often-fatal melanoma is early detection of the disease, a task that is aided by early detection of new or changed pigmented moles. The medical community relies heavily upon patient input to assess these early stage changes. A major education effort to make people aware of the problem, and the need for aggressive skin self-screening has been very successful at raising awareness and interesting individuals in participating in such screening. Nonetheless, this activity has proven difficult to accomplish effectively, even for highly motivated individuals. We propose development of a highly refined, all digital, completely portable, low cost imaging tool which can dramatically improve the ability of people to assist in finding new and changed pigmented moles at home. Currently available imaging systems for home use, while very effective, require use of a film-based image and tie the patient to a nearby imaging service. Recent improvements in consumer grade digital cameras, and their widespread proliferation, suggest that product availability, ease of use, greater privacy and higher patient compliance may be attainable for personal skin imaging through development of an all digital personal skin screening system. The goal of this Phase I project is to create and evaluate such a tool, and to prepare for a Phase II clinical study, which will address the efficacy of this type of skin monitoring.