A new study published in the Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology (JEADV) has determined SkinVision, a skin cancer application has a sensitivity of 95.1% in detecting the most common forms of skin cancer.
SkinVision’s awareness and tracking solution supports individuals with the early recognition of skin cancer. The new research shows the app has a sensitivity of 95% and specificity of 78%.
The research published evaluated the accuracy of the application for triaging skin lesions and has highlighted it can be a valuable tool for early skin cancer detection.
Tiago M. C. D. Marques, postdoctoral researcher at Erasmus MC, and one of the study authors said “‘The field of mHealth apps for the risk assessment of skin cancer is undergoing rapid evolution. It is clear from this and other recent studies based on clinical images that the application of machine learning in large image databases leads to a high sensitivity to distinguish between malignant and benign skin cancer cases.”
To evaluate the sensitivity of the algorithm, researchers used 285 histopathologically validated skin cancer cases from two previously published clinical studies and the smartphone application user database. The specificity was computed on a separate set from the user base, which contained 6,000 clinically-validated cases.
Andreea Udrea, a Ph.D. researcher at SkinVision, associate professor at University Politehnica of Bucharest and the lead author of the study commented “Providing the layperson with a highly sensitive, robust and easy-to-use method to check skin lesions for cancer has been the SkinVision research team’s goal for the past seven years. I’m confident to say that SkinVision users benefit from the latest technological advancements that have been incorporated in a rigorous and clinically tested mHealth app.”
So far, SkinVision has assisted in the finding of more than 35,000 skin cancer cases globally and managed to direct those people to a healthcare professional for further examination.
The service has the potential to triage those in need of treatment and could help to decrease both the average cost of treatment and the number of unnecessary doctor visits. The company has built up a customer portfolio of 1,200,000 users globally and a database of 3.5 million pictures of suspicious and benign skin spots.
