Polarized and non-polarized digital dermatoscope: design and construction

In the last years, Skin Cancer, commonly referred to as cutaneous malignant melanoma, has increased its incidence dramatically, awakening an essential concern on public health. This provokes research on new technologies that permit early detection of malignant melanoma, as is the dermatoscope. This paper presents the development of a low-cost digital dermato-scope called Atom, which is designed to help the dermatologist department of the Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Médicas y Nutrición Salvador Zubirán (INCMNSZ) to identify the primary skin lesions that occur at the Institute through a light source (polarized, non-polarized and yellow). This work presents the proposed design based on the anthropometric measures of the Mexican population, the electrical instrumentation and programming, the illumination analysis and its simulation over the lens; in the end, two dermatoscopes were built, but only one was fully instrumented and tested by the dermatologist department.