MelScan: An Android Application for Early Detection of Melanoma

• Main Author: Nyambang, Edwin
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: IRC 2014
• Subjects: T Technology (General)
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/14847/1/16738_Edwin%20Anak%20Nyambang.pdf; http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/14847/
• Institution: Universiti Teknologi Petronas

Amongst the medical community, more focus was given on early detection of cancer, in particular melanoma, a type of skin cancer. Malignant melanoma was currently the leading source of death from skin diseases (Friedman et al., 2008). This project was aimed at making a mobile application that can be used by civilians in the rural areas to detect melanoma at its early stages, because it was difficult for them to get help from dermatologists in rural areas, as well as getting access to the proper equipment for melanoma detection. Due to time constraints, the scope of this study was narrowed to analyzing current image processing technology used in melanoma detection, especially on the Android mobile platform, developing an Android application that can use one of the image processing algorithms for melanoma detection, and to improve accuracy of melanoma detection, in particular during its early stages. To do this, a market research was carried to find out what were the available applications that were out there in the Google Playstore (also known as Google Market) that was also used for early detection of melanoma, before comparing the types of available image processing algorithms that was to be used during the development phase. Based on the findings, there were only 2 applications in the Google Market that was used for melanoma detection, and that the Prewitt operator makes for a good compromise between performance and complexity in developing the application. Overall, the application was developed successfully, and in the future, more functions would be added to make this application more marketable, such as cloud storage function and wearable technology