Colour clusters for computer diagnosis of melanocytic lesions

Background: To overcome subjectivity and variability in the interpretation of dermoscopic images, image analysis programs, enabling the numerical description of melanocytic lesion images, have been developed. Objectives: Our aim was to assess a method for the description of colours in melanocytic lesion images, based on the subdivision of image colours into red, green and blue clusters. Methods: Melanomas and naevi of the test set were described by means of 23 colour clusters previously selected by a training set comprising 369 melanocytic lesion images. The diagnostic performance obtained by this automated method was compared to sensitivity and specificity of diagnosis of 4 dermatologists. Results: Colour cluster values significantly differed between melanomas and naevi. Moreover, sensitivity and specificity values of computer diagnosis were similar to those achieved by the dermatologists. Conclusion: Our image analysis program based on the assessment of one single parameter has the diagnostic accuracy of dermatologists employing dermoscopy on a regular basis. Copyright (c) 2007 S. Karger AG, Basel.