Analysis of multi-modal optical images of skin-lesions for skin-cancer detection and characterization

Optical imaging of skin-lesions for early detection and management of skin-cancers has been of significant interest in dermatology. Though there are optical imaging systems available today, such as the "Dermascope", they largely utilize surface illumination for epiluminescence light microscopy (ELM) imaging. Limitations of surface reflectance based imaging systems have been realized in producing images with important vascular and depth dependent information. We have developed a novel optical imaging system, the Nevoscope, that uses transillumination as to provide images of skin-lesions showing sub-surface pigmentation as well as vascular architecture based blood volume information. This paper presents a Nevoscope transillumination method to acquire vascular architecture information, and compare its performance to epiluminescence imaging method for its ability to measure vascular information for characterization of skin- lesions.