Macro vs Micro Skin Imaging: Finding an Affordable Approach for Dermatological Care Access in Rural/Remote Areas

The present study explored alternative methods for photographing skin lesions in the absence of specialized instruments like dermatoscopes, aiming to enhance remote diagnostic capabilities, particularly in light of the increasing incidence of melanoma cases annually. Using two lenses attached to a smartphone camera, one macroscopic and the other microscopic, study images of nevus formations from one individual were captured, and, in the absence of a collaboration with a dermatologist, subsequently labeled as melanoma or non-melanoma using a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) which was trained, with dermoscopic images of melanoma and non-melanoma formations, to see on which image set better performances would be attained. The CNN demonstrated better performance on microscopic images, with 75% of the dataset being labeled correctly, compared to the macroscopic one, with 63% of the dataset being labeled correctly. These findings highlight the potential of smartphone-based imaging with specialized micro lenses to improve diagnostic accuracy for melanoma and other dermatological conditions in remote healthcare settings.