Digital dermoscopy is the process of acquiring and storing specific digital images using dermoscopic examination. Do you know about the innovations of digital dermoscopy? Currently, this technology is widely used in clinical settings.
Doctors use it for machine learning, sequential monitoring, and teledermoscopy. You can call a digital dermoscopy a microscope or dermoscopy. It is an essential tool that helps to provide patient care at an optimized level.
Moreover, it works to provide images of high resolution to track the changes in a better way. It also helps to detect the cancer of the skin and certain other conditions earlier.
You can say that digital dermoscopy is the modern and valid method to detect alterations in skin lesions that are pigmented. Specific pigmented lesions of the skin like nevi or moles can cause melanoma. That is the reason it is necessary to monitor pigmentation patterns regularly.
Doctors continuously monitor your pigmented lesions. Some warning signs show that your lesion is active now. These signs are termed as ABCDE rule. It includes an irregular border, evolution, asymmetry of the mole, diameter higher than 6mm, and non-uniform coloration.
There are certain risk factors for melanoma development. These risk factors include having many freckles, excessive outdoor activities, personal or family history of cancer, and light phototype, which means the light color of skin and eyes.
Other risk factors are significant alterations in the freckles and major burns in adolescence or childhood. The dermoscopic examination helps to enhance the diagnostic accuracy or validity. It decreases certain biopsies of nonmelanoma and melanoma skin cancers that are unnecessary.
1,2 Digital dermoscopy can be defined as gaining and storing digital dermoscopic photographs via specific smart image capture devices like tablets and smartphones, digital cameras, and other devices that we use for image acquisition.
A specialist will perform digital dermoscopy through a microscopic examination of the whole surface of your skin, photographing, locating certain lesions, and representing them on the entire body map.
Purpose Of Digital Dermoscopy
We all are thankful for digital techniques. The reason is that it helps us to diagnose all the high-risk lesions. It helps to make a premature evaluation that works to facilitate the process of cure and treatment.
After completion of the study, each patient gets the microscopic image of entire pigmented lesions. It helps to monitor, control and analyze the lesions. The dermatologist decides which lesions he should remove. Digital dermoscopy is performed in different clinics.
Sequential Digital Monitoring
It is the storage and capture of certain dermoscopic images of some suspicious lesions that dermatologists monitor over time. Studies have reported that SDDI helps the process of early detection of menalonas. It decreases the number of unnecessary excisions.
Another study found that with the length of monitoring, the probability of detection of melanoma enhanced. It suggests that dermatologists can use this technique even in high-risk groups.
Teledermoscopy
In the United States, this technique is on the rise. You can say that many consultations and programs are increasing in that area yearly. Studies report that after adding specific digital dermoscopic images, the diagnostic accuracy is improved regarding telecom screenings.
These screenings were concerned with the detection of skin cancer. It is practiced nowadays in two models. One is video consultation that is live-interactive, and another is image storage for future consultation.
Machine Learning
Machine and big data appeared as the future of dermatology and medicine. You can call machine learning a type of artificial intelligence. It uses certain computational algorithms that allow computer programs to improve accuracy by analyzing more excellent data sets.
Image Acquisition
For image acquisition through digital dermoscopy, many devices are available. It includes dermatoscopes that attach to digital cameras and smartphones, and other all-in-one systems. Digital single-lens reflex cameras are present that provide the image of high quality.
If we talk about video dermoscopy, it provides stored images that have poor resolution. In dermatology, for clinical imaging nowadays, smartphone use has increased.
The reason is that the image quality of current smartphone images can be comparable to digital cameras. But DSLR cameras still provide images of high quality. Go to someone who is an expert if you are recommended for digital dermoscopy.