The ABCD system of melanoma detection

Abstract

BACKGROUND.The ABCD (Asymmetry, Border, Color, and Dimension) criteria represent a commonly used clinical guide for the diagnosis of early melanoma. The authors revised these criteria in the light of objective measurements of the features of pigmented skin lesions obtained by telespectrophotometric analysis (TS) in the visible and near-infrared wavelengths. METHODS.This study involves a consecutive series of 186 patients with 195 cutaneous pigmented lesions (53 melanomas and 142 nonmelanoma lesions). Each lesion was subjected to TS in vivo, before surgery. For this purpose, the authors used four spectrophotometric parameters that could be closely related to the four criteria of the ABCD guide, namely, roundness (an estimate of how a lesion contour resembles a circle), smoothness (an indicator of the regularity of a lesion border), mean reflectance (the ability of a lesion to diffuse or reflect the incident light), and size (the greatest dimension of a lesion). RESULTS.When melanomas and nonmelanoma lesions were compared by univariate analysis, all four spectrophotometric parameters considered proved to be significantly different (P ϭ 0.05). Multivariate logistic analysis showed that mean reflectance in the infrared (P Ͻ 0.01) and size (P ϭ 0.03) were parameters independently associated with melanoma. Melanoma showed lower reflectance and greater size than benign lesions. CONCLUSIONS.Information provided by TS substantially validates the importance of the ABCD clinical guide and suggests that color is the most important parameter in discriminating melanoma from nevi. In particular, melanoma appears darker than other pigmented lesions.

Brain tumor demarcation using optical spectroscopy; an <italic>in vitro</italic> study

“…It is typically obtained by illuminating a sample ͑e.g., tissue͒ with a broadband white light source. 21,31 Because of the changes in structure and morphology at the cellular and subcellular level, optical properties of human normal brain tissues are very different from that of human brain tumorous tissues. 32,33 In this study, the potential of using autofluorescence combined with diffuse reflectance was investigated for brain tumor demarcation.…”

Dynamic recursive tree-based partitioning for malignant melanoma identification in skin lesion dermoscopic images

“…Following the ABCD-rule of dermoscopy (Nachbar, Stolz, Merkle, Cognetta, Vogt, Landthaler, Bilek, Braun-Falco, and Plewig, 1994), descriptors chosen for characterizing different lesion classes consist of quantitative measures of asymmetry, border, and color information extracted by dermoscopic images. More details about ABCD-rule can be found, in example, in Bono, Tomatis, Bartoli, Tragni, Radaelli, Maurichi, and Marchesini (1999); Maglogiannis and Kosmopoulos (2006); Celebi, Kingravi, Uddin, Iyatomi, Aslandogan, Stoecker, and Moss (2007). Table 1 summarizes the descriptors of the skin lesions data set…”

Green Propolis Compounds (Baccharin and p-Coumaric Acid) Show Beneficial Effects in Mice for Melanoma Induced by B16f10

“…In addition, about 55,500 deaths are reported annually, corresponding to >80% of deaths from skin cancer and 7% of all cancer deaths [ 1 , 2 ]. Characteristically, cutaneous melanoma is the most aggressive form of skin cancer, with the worst prognosis, and it affects a younger population than most cancers [ 3 , 4 ]. First described by René Laënnac in 1806, cutaneous malignant melanoma is based on the atypical transformation of melanocytes, melanin-producing cells present in the basal layer of the epidermis, that expand into the deep and superficial layers [ 5 ].…”

“…The melanomas that infiltrate the dermis are capable of producing metastases, and are responsible for the high mortality rate of the disease [4,5,7]. In view of these aspects, in addition to the high metastatic index, in more advanced stages, melanoma has high aggressiveness, which decreases the effectiveness of currently used therapies, such as surgical removal, radiotherapy, cryotherapy, and chemotherapy, used alone or in combination [3,8,9]. In addition, it is worth highlighting the negative aspects related to chemotherapeutic treatment, among them, the serious adverse effects and the induction of resistance to multiple drugs [10].…”