Multimode optical dermoscopy (SkinSpectTM) analysis for skin with melanocytic nevus

We have developed a multimode dermoscope (SkinSpectTM) capable of illuminating human skin samples in-vivo with spectrally-programmable linearly-polarized light at 33 wavelengths between 468nm and 857 nm. Diffusely reflected photons are separated into collinear and cross-polarized image paths and images captured for each illumination wavelength. In vivo human skin nevi (N = 20) were evaluated with the multimode dermoscope and melanin and hemoglobin concentrations were compared with Spatially Modulated Quantitative Spectroscopy (SMoQS) measurements. Both systems show low correlation between their melanin and hemoglobin concentrations, demonstrating the ability of the SkinSpectTM to separate these molecular signatures and thus act as a biologically plausible device capable of early onset melanoma detection.