Polarized multispectral imaging for the diagnosis of skin cancer

The effective and non-invasive diagnosis of skin cancer is a hot topic in biophotonics since the current gold standard, a biopsy, is slow and costly. Non-invasive optical techniques such as polarization and multispectral imaging have arisen as powerful tools to overcome these constraints. The combination of these techniques provides a comprehensive characterization of skin chromophores including polarization, color and spectral features. Hence, in this work we propose a polarized multispectral imaging device that works from 414 nm to 995 nm and at 0°, 45° and 90° polarization configurations. Preliminary results performed over 20 nevi and 20 melanoma found statistically significant descriptors (p<0.05) that discriminated between these two lesion etiologies. A further analysis of more lesions is expected to contribute in reducing the false positives during the diagnosis process and, as a consequence, the number of necessary biopsies.