Posted on 4/22/2021
Melanoma, which accounts for over 70 percent of all skin cancers, occurs when pigment producing cells called melanocytes multiply uncontrollably. This cancer is typically diagnosed through visual inspection of Suspicious Pigmented Lesions (SPLs), and such early detection of lesions in a physician’s office are often life-saving. However, there are several disadvantages with this approach, including the high volume of potential lesions one has to biopsy and test before confirming a diagnosis.
To overcome these issues, researchers from MIT and a few other institutions around Boston, have developed a new deep learning tool to more easily identify harmful lesions from photographs taken with a smartphone.
The paper, published in Science Translational Medicine, describes the development of the tool using a branch of artificial intelligence called deep convolution...