Keeping tabs on moles or skin lesions is essential to catching skin cancer early. Now, a new free app helps you to create a full-body "photographic baseline" of your skin, snap photos of suspicious moles or lesions, and monitor any changes in your skin over time.
"Whole body photography is a well-established resource for following patients at risk for melanoma," Michael Sabel of the University of Michigan, the lead physician in developing the app, said in a press release. "However, it requires a professional photographer, is not always covered by insurance, and can be an inconvenience."
The app, free and available for iPhone and iPad, guides users through a series of 23 photos, covering their entire body. Photos are stored within the app for users to share with their doctor and serve as a baseline for future comparisons. The app will also remind users when it is time to perform a skin self-exam.
"We recommend skin self-exams for everyone in order to detect skin cancer at the earliest stages, when treatment is less invasive and more successful," said Sabel.
"If you have fair skin or burn easily, have had sunburns in the past or used tanning beds, or have a family history of melanoma, you are considered high-risk, and so it's even more important." Just in case, the app includes a risk calculator that allows you to input your personal data to calculate your individual risk.
Download UMSkinCheck on iTunes. To learn more, watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO2GwKAfEqY
Other similar apps include Skin of Mine for iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, which lets you analyze and share photos of moles as well as get a consultation from a dermatologist, or the iPhone app FotoFinder, a service that allows doctors to upload photos with up to 20-fold magnification of moles to request a rating from international skin cancer experts, allowing patients access to expert opinions regardless of geography.
© 2012 AFP/Relaxnews
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