Colour clusters for computer diagnosis of melanocytic lesions.

BACKGROUND

To overcome subjectivity and variability in the interpretation of dermoscopic images, image analysis programs, enabling the numerical description of melanocytic lesion images, have been developed.

OBJECTIVES

Our aim was to assess a method for the description of colours in melanocytic lesion images, based on the subdivision of image colours into red, green and blue clusters.

METHODS

Melanomas and naevi of the test set were described by means of 23 colour clusters previously selected by a training set comprising 369 melanocytic lesion images. The diagnostic performance obtained by this automated method was compared to sensitivity and specificity of diagnosis of 4 dermatologists.

RESULTS

Colour cluster values significantly differed between melanomas and naevi. Moreover, sensitivity and specificity values of computer diagnosis were similar to those achieved by the dermatologists.

CONCLUSION

Our image analysis program based on the assessment of one single parameter has the diagnostic accuracy of dermatologists employing dermoscopy on a regular basis.