Computer-aided classification of melanocytic lesions using dermoscopic images.

BACKGROUND: Computer-assisted diagnosis of dermoscopic images of skin lesions has the potential to improve melanoma early detection. OBJECTIVE: We sought to evaluate the performance of a novel classifier that uses decision forest classification of dermoscopic images to generate a lesion severity score. METHODS: Severity scores were calculated for 173 dermoscopic images of skin lesions with known histologic diagnosis (39 melanomas, 14 nonmelanoma skin cancers, and 120 benign lesions). A threshold score was used to measure classifier sensitivity and specificity. A reader study was conducted to compare the sensitivity and specificity of the classifier with those of 30 dermatology clinicians. RESULTS: The classifier sensitivity for melanoma was 97.4%; specificity was 44.2% in a test set of images. In the reader study, the classifier's sensitivity to melanoma was higher (P < .001) and specificity was lower (P < .001) than that of clinicians. LIMITATIONS: This is a retrospective study using existing images primarily chosen for biopsy by a dermatologist. The size of the test set is small. CONCLUSIONS: Our classifier may aid clinicians in deciding if a skin lesion should be biopsied and can easily be incorporated into a portable tool (that uses no proprietary equipment) that could aid clinicians in noninvasively evaluating cutaneous lesions.

OpenSlide: A vendor-neutral software foundation for digital pathology.

Although widely touted as a replacement for glass slides and microscopes in pathology, digital slides present major challenges in data storage, transmission, processing and interoperability. Since no universal data format is in widespread use for these images today, each vendor defines its own proprietary data formats, analysis tools, viewers and software libraries. This creates issues not only for pathologists, but also for interoperability. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of OpenSlide, a vendor-neutral C library for reading and manipulating digital slides of diverse vendor formats. The library is extensible and easily interfaced to various programming languages. An application written to the OpenSlide interface can transparently handle multiple vendor formats. OpenSlide is in use today by many academic and industrial organizations world-wide, including many research sites in the United States that are funded by the National Institutes of Health.