On the spectral signature of melanoma: a non-parametric classification framework for cancer detection in hyperspectral imaging of melanocytic lesions

Biomed Opt Express. 2018 Nov 15;9(12):6283-6301. doi: 10.1364/BOE.9.006283. eCollection 2018 Dec 1.

Abstract

Early detection and diagnosis is a must in secondary prevention of melanoma and other cancerous lesions of the skin. In this work, we present an online, reservoir-based, non-parametric estimation and classification model that allows for this functionality on pigmented lesions, such that detection thresholding can be tuned to maximize accuracy and/or minimize overall false negative rates. This system has been tested in a dataset consisting of 116 patients and a total of 124 hyperspectral images of nevi, raised nevi and melanomas, detecting up to 100% of the suspicious lesions at the expense of some false positives.