Melanoma Identification – SolarScan
Playing it Safe in the Sun – Melanoma Identification
Australians enjoy a great outdoor lifestyle – but it comes at a price. We have the highest incidence of skin cancer in the world.
Melanoma is the most dangerous form of skin cancer. It can, however, be easily cured if detected early. However there is a need to provide doctors with technology that can assess whether a lesion is a melanoma or not with a high degree of reliability.
With one of the world’s leading melanoma experts at the Sydney Melanoma Unit and Australian medical instrumentation company, Polartechnics Ltd, CSIRO’s Quantitative Imaging Team has developed a digital mole monitoring and analysis system called SolarScan which is designed to be used in doctors’ surgeries as a diagnostic aide in detecting melanoma. From an image of a patient’s skin lesion, the Image Analysis software extracts and measures features considered by experts to be important indicators of melanoma.
Our software for detecting melanoma has been incorporated into SolarScan, which is now commercially available from Polartechnics.
SolarScan was launched by Australian Federal Science Minister, The Hon Peter McGauran MP in 2002 at Sydney’s famous Bondi Beach.
SolarScan is now in use in doctor’s surgeries in Australia with plans for international export well advanced. Product enquiries about SolarScan and where it is in use should be directed to Polartechnics
“In developing its skin cancer detection product, SolarScan, Polartechnics required leading edge image analysis expertise to complement its own research group. After reviewing expertise around the world, we found that world best expertise was in our own backyard at CSIRO” Victor Skladnev, Polartechnics.
SolarScan has received the following awards:
- Institution of Engineers, Sydney Division, Engineering Excellence Awards, 2005 Bradfield Award, overall award for all categories
- Institution of Engineers, Sydney Division, Engineering Excellence Awards, 2005 Award for Control Systems, Network Infrastructure & Telecommunications Category
- Institution of Engineers, Sydney Division, Engineering Excellence Awards, 2005 Award (Shared) for Manufacturing – Products, Facilities & Processes Category
- Institution of Engineers, National Engineering Excellence Awards, 2005 Engineering Excellence Award
- Dupont Innovation Award 2005/2006 , Open Category
Our highly skilled team of world class researchers and engineers is open to partnerships and collaborations for research, development, and commercialisation.
Contact us to learn more.