New Gigapixel Camera May Detect Melanoma Early in Patients

Scientists may have found a new way to detect melanoma early in order to save lives. Scientists have created a camera capable of taking snapshots of the entire human body and rendering high-resolution images of a patient's skin.

Melanoma is the fifth most common cancer type in the United States. It's also the deadliest form of skin cancer, causing more than 75 percent of skin cancer deaths. If caught early enough, though, it's almost always curable. And this new camera may just provide researchers with the opportunity to do just that.

"The camera is designed to find lesions potentially indicating skin cancers on patients at an earlier stage than current skin examination techniques," said Daniel Marks, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Normally a dermatologist examines either a small region of the skin at high resolution or a large region at low resolution, but a gigapixel image doesn't require a compromise between the two."

The gigapixel camera essentially combines 34 microcameras into one. With a structure similar to a telescope and its eyepieces, the camera combines precise but simple objective lens that produces an imperfect image with known irregularities. The microcameras are arranged in a "dome" to correct these aberrations and form a continuous image of the scene.

That said, the resolution of the gigapixel camera is not as high as the best dermatoscope. However, it's significantly better than normal photography. In fact, it could potentially be used for telemedicine, which could make routine screening available to a larger number of people, even in remote locations.

The new camera could be huge when it comes to detecting melanoma early. In fact, it could potentially save the lives of those who would otherwise not discover they possess this particular type of cancer before it's too late. That said, this camera still has to be proven effective in clinical trials before becoming routinely available to patients.

The new research will be presented at The Optical Society's 98^th Annual Meeting, Frontier's in Optics, being held Oct. 19-23.