Development of an optical skin scanner to aid the monitoring of evolution of skin nevi for early diagnosis of cutaneous melanoma

Development of an optical skin scanner to aid the monitoring of evolution of skin nevi for early diagnosis of cutaneous melanoma

Goethals, F.P.C.

Melles, M. (mentor)
Verwaal, M. (mentor)
Guldemond, N.A. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Industrial Design

Master of Science Integrated Product Design

2011-11-04

Although cutaneous melanoma is a skin cancer that accounts for only 10% of the cases of skin cancers in humans, it results in 75% of the deaths related to skin cancer due to its aggresive nature. It is the condition in which a tumor growth originates in melanocytes; skin cells which produce pigment and are the result of the skin's complexion. When diagnosed in time, the prognosis after removal of the tumor is very good, but when the tumor can grow invasively, the chance of metastases increases rapidly. When melanoma occurs, the appearance of the lesion will change. For example, the shape of the spot can change, or new colors can appear. The person can also experience aching or itching of the lesion. When a medical physician (e.g. a GP or dermatologist) inspects the skin of the patient, he will look for these symptoms. At home, the patients can perform selfscreening by regularly inspecting the skin for signs of malignancy. Several problems are identified that can occur in selfscreening. These mainly hold to the insecurity of patients of their ability to inspect the skin. Next to that, the quality of selfscreening may sometimes be poor, especially for hard to reach areas such as the back. There also seems to be reluctancy to attend to the physician in fear of a false alarm. To adress this issue, a product has been designed. The aim of this device is to provide the users with a tool to improve the quality of their selfscreening and to provide them with an advice on when to visit the dermatologist. The user will record an image of a selected group of nevi every month, which are stored on the device. After completion, the product will be connected to a PC on which a program performs the processing and analysis on the images. For each nevus, the program holds a record in which the change throughout time can be measured. When such change has been detected, the user will be alarmed to visit the dermatologist for this lesion. The dermatologist can also read out the device to see how the nevus has changed. The result is that the users feel supported in the procedure of selfscreening. Also, their quality of selfscreening has been improved. Together with a decreased change of false-alarms visits and melanoma diagnosed in a late stage, the investment of this product is justified for those with an elevated risk on melanoma.

medical
skin
cancer

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:f13d6ac3-94e3-4c76-a845-173ad58ad45d

2012-10-23

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2011 Goethals, F.P.C.