Abstract
Skin malignant melanoma is a highly angiogenic cancer, necessitating early diagnosis for positive prognosis. The current diagnostic standard of biopsy and histological examination inevitably leads to many unnecessary invasive excisions. Here, we propose a non-invasive method of identification of melanoma based on blood flow dynamics. We consider a wide frequency range from 0.005–2 Hz associated with both local vascular regulation and effects of cardiac pulsation. Combining uniquely the power of oscillations associated with individual physiological processes we obtain a marker which distinguishes between melanoma and atypical nevi with sensitivity of 100% and specificity of 90.9%. The method reveals valuable functional information about the melanoma microenvironment. It also provides the means for simple, accurate, in vivo distinction between malignant melanoma and atypical nevi, and may lead to a substantial reduction in the number of biopsies currently undertaken.
Highlights
Skin malignant melanoma is a highly angiogenic cancer, necessitating early diagnosis for positive prognosis
Five of the enrolled subjects were excluded from the final results as their laser Doppler flowmetry (LDF) tracings contained anomalous spikes, a likely erroneous optical effect
Disadvantages of such methods usually lie in their subjective nature; for example, any technique which relies on imaging still requires extensive training, and any resulting diagnoses may vary between practitioners
Summary
Skin malignant melanoma is a highly angiogenic cancer, necessitating early diagnosis for positive prognosis. Despite the development of a large number of non-invasive alternatives[2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9], the current gold-standard in melanoma diagnosis remains as the examination of a skin lesion by a trained dermatologist, followed by histological examination of an invasive excisional biopsy of the skin specimen[2,3,8,9]. This method results in sensitivity and specificity ranging from 65–80%9. Skin cancers from basal cell carcinoma to malignant melanoma have been described in terms of their average blood www.nature.com/scientificreports/
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