Comparative study between conventional camera images and smartphone images for eyelid tumor telediagnosis.

Objective: to compare the accuracy of eyelid tumor diagnosis obtained by evaluating conventional camera images with the ones obtained by evaluating smartphone images.

Methods: from January 2016 to July 2017, 36 patients underwent face-to-face external assessments and biomicroscopic examinations to establish clinical diagnoses. The lesions were photographed using Canon PowerShot SX530 HS Digital Camera (16.8 Megapixels) and Samsung GALAXY S4 smartphone camera. All lesions were resected and submitted to anatomopathological examinations. Preoperative images were sent to two specialists in eyelid diseases and then remotely analyzed. Data from in-person diagnoses and telediagnoses were compared with the gold standard of histological diagnosis.

Results: the most frequent lesions were basal cell carcinoma (33.3%), actinic keratosis (19.4%), and nevus (13.9%). Kappa coefficient for the diagnosis of malignant lesion showed agreement between the two tele-evaluators in the conventional digital camera images (0.68) and in the smartphone images (0.78). The face-to-face examiner's accuracy was of 94.4%; the tele-evaluators' accuracy in the conventional digital camera images was of 83.3% and in the smartphone images varied from 80.6% to 86.1%. Comparing the in-person diagnoses with the telediagnoses (obtained by evaluating conventional digital camera images or smartphone images), there was no significant difference in the hit rates.

Conclusion: for eyelid tumor telediagnosis, images obtained using smartphone camera were equivalent to those obtained using conventional digital camera.