Phone app detects cancer

Now, a mobile application can detect if you have skin cancer, sparing you the trouble of going to the doctor every time you spot a suspicious mole or lesion – just take a picture of the area with your phone’s camera and run it through the data base, and within a few seconds you will find out what the issue is and if it’s cancerous.

The app is called DermoScreen, created by a professor at the University of Houston, George Zouridakis. It is now being evaluated for further testing at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Zouridakis, professor of engineering technology, has been working on this project since 2005 – making a mobile application seemed necessary, as everything was slowly moving on to the small screen of a mobile phone.

Early testing has found that the app is accurate around 85% of the time, which is similar to the accuracy rate for dermatologists, and more accurate than that of primary care physicians. Zouridakis said, patients would be referred for a follow-up by the app depending on the results.

The technology uses a dermoscope attachment, a special magnifying lens and provides special illumination of the area being photographed.