All Digital Home Use System for Mole Monitoring

描述（由申请人提供）： 在美国，皮肤癌和黑色素瘤的发病率持续快速上升。对通常致命的黑色素瘤的最佳防御是早期发现这种疾病，这是一项通过早期发现新的或改变的色素痣来帮助的任务。医学界在很大程度上依赖于患者的输入来评估这些早期变化。为使人们认识到这一问题而开展的一项重大教育工作以及积极的皮肤自我筛查的必要性，在提高认识和吸引个人参与这种筛查方面取得了非常成功的效果。尽管如此，这项活动已被证明难以有效完成，即使是高度积极的个人。我们建议开发一种高度精致的，全数字化的，完全便携式的，低成本的成像工具，它可以显着提高人们在家中帮助寻找新的和变化的色素痣的能力。目前可用于家庭使用的成像系统虽然非常有效，但需要使用基于胶片的图像并将患者与附近的成像服务联系起来。消费级数码相机的最新改进及其广泛普及表明，通过开发全数字个人皮肤筛查系统，个人皮肤成像可以获得产品可用性、易用性、更大的隐私性和更高的患者依从性。这个I期项目的目标是创建和评估这样一个工具，并为II期临床研究做准备，该研究将解决这种类型的皮肤监测的有效性。

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.