Biomedical subjects

Mario Cristofolini

Publications and source records attributed to Mario Cristofolini.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2004

Clinical validation of an automated system for supporting the early diagnosis of melanoma.

BACKGROUND: Early diagnosis and surgical excision is the most effective treatment of melanoma. Well-trained dermatologists reach a high level of diagnostic accuracy with good sensitivity and specificity. Their performances increase using some technical aids as digital epiluminescence microscopy. Several studies describe the development of computerized systems whose aim is supporting dermatologists in the early diagnosis of melanoma. In many cases, the performances of those systems were comparable to those of dermatologists. However, this cannot tell us whether a system is able to support dermatologists. Actually, the computerized system might correctly recognize the same lesions that the dermatologist does, without providing them any useful advice and therefore being useless in recognizing early malignant lesions. PURPOSE: We present a novel approach to enhance dermatologists' performances in the diagnosis of early melanoma. We provide results of our evaluation of a computerized system combined with dermatologists. METHODS: A Multiple-Classifier system was developed on a set of 152 cases and combined to a group of eight dermatologists to support them by improving their sensitivity. RESULTS: The eight dermatologists have average sensitivity and specificity values of 0.83 and 0.66, respectively. The Multiple-Classifier system performs as well as the eight dermatologists (sensitivity range: 0.75-0.86; specificity range: 0.64-0.89). The combination with the dermatologists shows an average improvement of 11% (P=0.022) of dermatologists' sensitivity. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that an automated system can be effective in supporting dermatologists because it recognizes different malignant melanomas with respect to the dermatologists.

Dermatology↗

PubMed2003

Epidemiology of skin tumors: data from the cutaneous cancer registry in Trentino, Italy.

BACKGROUND: A Skin Cancer Registry was established in the province of Trento in northeast Italy in 1992 with the aim of collecting data on all cutaneous tumors affecting residents. These neoplasms are responsible for considerable morbidity and utilization of the Health Service because of their high frequency and, therefore, knowledge of the exact incidence is very important in planning health policies. Registry data are also very helpful in performing studies of analytical and descriptive epidemiology. METHODS: For each patient, we collected personal data, phenotypical characteristics, professional history, concurrent diseases, previous therapy or trauma, and all data regarding the tumors. Patients were interviewed in person or, less frequently, by phone. All data were verified and put in a computerized file, in a protected room. The Statistics Institute of Trento University analyzed the data. Comparison among means was performed using the analysis of variance and differences among proportions were tested by chi-squared analysis. Poisson regression and the likelihood ratio test were used to compare incidence rates. We analyze here the data regarding epiteliomas and melanoma. RESULTS: During the study period we registered 3435 primary skin tumors in 2868 individuals. Crude incidence rates, calculated using the number of subjects (not the number of tumors), were 87.9 for basal cell carcinoma (BCC), 28.9 for squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), and 14.2 for cutaneous melanoma (CM), per 100,000 per annum. We also calculated the same figures in females and males and specific incidence rates in both sexes and evaluated the distribution of skin cancer according to sex and anatomical site. CONCLUSION: We report the analysis of the data collected by the Skin Cancer registry in a 6 year period and compare the data with published data in literature and with data of a previously registered melanoma file. Our results confirm the high incidence of nonmelanoma skin cancers and the variation in the histological patterns of CM.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

A multiple classifier system for early melanoma diagnosis.

Melanoma is the most dangerous skin cancer and early diagnosis is the key factor in its successful treatment. Well-trained dermatologists reach a diagnosis via visual inspection, and reach sensitivity and specificity levels of about 80%. Several computerised diagnostic systems were reported in the literature using different classification algorithms. In this paper, we will illustrate a novel approach by which a suitable combination of different classifiers is used in order to improve the diagnostic performances of single classifiers. We used three different kinds of classifiers, namely linear discriminant analysis (LDA), k-nearest neighbour (k-NN) and a decision tree, the inputs of which are 38 geometric and colorimetric features automatically extracted from digital images of skin lesions. Multiple classifiers were generated by combining the diagnostic outputs of single classifiers with appropriate voting schemata. This approach was evaluated on a set of 152 digital skin images. We compared the performances of multiple classifiers (2- and 3-classifier groups) between them and with respect to single ones (1-classifier group). We further compared the classifiers' performances with those of eight dermatologists. Classifiers' performances were measured in terms of distance from the ideal classifier. Compared with 1- and 2-classifier groups, performances of 3-classifier systems were significantly higher (P<0.0005 and P<0.001, respectively). No statistically significant differences were found between the 1- and 2-classifier groups (P=0.352). While the dermatologists group showed a level of performances significantly higher than the 1-classifier systems (P<0.020), no differences were found between the multiple classifier groups and the dermatologists groups, indicating comparable performances. This work suggests that a suitable combination of different kinds of classifiers can improve the performances of an automatic diagnostic system.

Algorithms↗