Solitary neurofibroma of the face masquerading as a low-flow vascular malformation - case report and experience of management.

This case report presents a 34-year-old woman who was referred to our regional plastic surgery unit following a 32-year history of a progressively enlarging mass overlying the left maxilla. The mass was initially diagnosed and treated as a low-flow vascular malformation. However, subsequent histopathological assessment confirmed the diagnosis of a cutaneous neurofibroma.

In vivo measurement of skin microrelief using photometric stereo in the presence of interreflections.

This paper proposes and describes an implementation of a photometric stereo-based technique for in vivo assessment of three-dimensional (3D) skin topography in the presence of interreflections. The proposed method illuminates skin with red, green, and blue colored lights and uses the resulting variation in surface gradients to mitigate the effects of interreflections. Experiments were carried out on Caucasian, Asian, and African American subjects to demonstrate the accuracy of our method and to validate the measurements produced by our system.

Distribution quantification on dermoscopy images for computer-assisted diagnosis of cutaneous melanomas.

Computerised analysis on skin lesion images has been reported to be helpful in achieving objective and reproducible diagnosis of melanoma. In particular, asymmetry in shape, colour and structure reflects the irregular growth of melanin under the skin and is of great importance for diagnosing the malignancy of skin lesions. This paper proposes a novel asymmetry analysis based on a newly developed pigmentation elevation model and the global point signatures (GPSs).

Biological indexes based reflectional asymmetry for classifying cutaneous lesions.

This paper proposes a novel reflectional asymmetry descriptor to quantize the asymmetry of the cutaneous lesions for the discrimination of malignant melanoma from benign nevi. A pigmentation elevation model of the biological indexes is first constructed, and then the asymmetry descriptor is computed by minimizing the histogram difference of the global point signatures of the pigmentation model. Melanin and Erythema Indexes are used instead of the original intensities in colour space to characterize the pigmentation distribution of the cutaneous lesions.

Unsupervised sub-segmentation for pigmented skin lesions.

Background: Early identification of malignant melanoma with the surgical removal of thin lesions is the most effective treatment for skin cancers. A computer-aided diagnostic system assists to improve the diagnostic accuracy, where segmenting lesion from normal skin is usually considered as the first step. One of the challenges in the automated segmentation of skin lesions arises from the fact that darker areas within the lesion should be considered separate from the more general suspicious lesion as a whole, because these pigmented areas can provide significant additional diagnostic information.

Enhanced 3D curvature pattern and melanoma diagnosis.

This article describes an enhanced curvature pattern based melanoma diagnosis system using convolution techniques and ensemble classifiers. We extract the 3D data of melanoma with a photometric stereo device first. Then differential forms of the melanoma surface can be extracted with the convolution method proposed.

Assessment of cosmesis after breast reconstruction surgery: a systematic review.

Background: Breast reconstruction (BR) is undertaken to improve cosmetic outcomes, but how this is optimally assessed is uncertain. This review summarises current methods for assessing cosmesis after reconstructive surgery and makes recommendations for future practice.

Methods: A comprehensive systematic review identified all studies with 20 or more participants that evaluated the cosmetic outcome of BR.

A new method describing border irregularity of pigmented lesions.

Background/purpose: Automatic quantitative characterization of border irregularity generating useful descriptors is a highly important task for computer-aided diagnosis of melanoma. This paper proposes a novel approach to describe the border irregularity of melanomas aiming at achieving higher recognition rates.

Methods: By introducing a boundary characteristic description, which we call a centroid distance diagram (CDD), a compact-supported mapping, called the centroid distance curve, can be extracted from this diagram.

Obtaining malignant melanoma indicators through statistical analysis of 3D skin surface disruptions.

Background/purpose: It has been observed that disruptions in skin patterns are larger for malignant melanoma (MM) than benign lesions. In order to extend the classification results achieved for 2D skin patterns, this work intends to investigate the feasibility of lesion classification using 3D skin surface texture, in the form of surface normals acquired from a previously built six-light photometric stereo device.

Material And Methods: The proposed approach seeks to separate MM from benign lesions through analysis of the degree of surface disruptions in the tilt and slant direction of surface normals, so called skin tilt pattern and skin slant pattern.