Early Detection of Skin Cancer Using Millimetre-Wave Waveguide Reflectometers

Skin cancer represents a large problem in today's healthcare setting. The majority of cancer diagnoses are attributed to malignant skin diseases including its major types: basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma and melanoma. Early diagnoses is critical given early detection of malignant lesions largely increases chances of successful treatment. The current gold standard of diagnosis is histopathological examination of biopsied skin. Biopsies are not only invasive and expensive, they have variable positive predictive value, meaning they may often be preformed unnecessarily. As such, the investigators have developed a skin scanner, which is less bulky and expensive than existing similar technologies, as a tool to evaluate skin lesions prior to determining the need for a biopsy. Their objective is to obtain information in order to validate this skin scanner in the context of its ability to accurately identify basal cell carcinoma skin lesions.