Astronomers take daily night sky photographs and, to identify and analyze the targets in each of these images, but also to map their progress over time, they develop image processing software. This technology has now been adapted to monitor the evolution of moles in patients at high risk of developing melanoma. The corresponding works have been presented on July 14 at the National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2022), in the United Kingdom, by Dr Meredith Morrell, researcher at the University of Southampton.
Melanoma, what is it?
Melanoma is theone of the shapes most serious forms of skin cancer. According Vidal Francemelanoma accounts for only 10% of skin cancers, but it is the cause of the vast majority of deaths from this type of cancer.
According unite istude collaborative partnership between the French network of cancer registries (Francim), the biostatistics-bioinformatics department of the Hospices Civils de Lyon (HCL), Public Health France and the National Cancer Institute (INCa), approximately 15,500 new cases of melanomas were detected in France in 2018 and nearly 2,000 people died. According the national cancer institute, melanoma thus represents about 4% of all cancers, and it affects as many men as women. This is the cancer for which the number of new cases per year increases the most: for 30 years, the evolution of the incidence is 4% per year in men and 2.7% in women.
Nevertheless, early identification considerably increases the survival rate: the standardized net survival at 5 years is thus estimated at 93%, with an excess mortality rate of almost zero beyond 5 years of follow-up.
Usually, patients considered high risk see their whole body…
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