Software-based service could identify cancerous moles

Sunbathers worried about potentially cancerous moles on their skin may have a remote assessment in 24 hours using a new software-based online tele-dermatology service developed at the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT).

The inventor Jonathan Blackledge, a professor at DIT, said his Moletest software relies on fractal geometry, which looks at how small pieces of a structure reflect the structure as a whole.

Anyone interested in using the Moletest service simply needs to log onto the website, upload a 5-megapixel or better image of a suspected mole, pay £40 and send it off to a central server and analysis software program located in Bournemouth. Within a day the customer will be given a result under one of three categories: red, green or amber.

Red indicates the mole is likely cancerous and the customer should see a GP immediately and request a biopsy; green means the growth is likely benign. An amber result encourages the customer to have the mole checked again in a few months’ time.