Duke Microscope Detects Melanoma

A new microscope developed at Duke University may increase doctors’ abilities to detect melanoma. Chemistry professor Warren S. Warren oversaw the development of the laser-based microscope. He says doctors may be “overcalling” melanoma and removing moles in case they are cancerous.

" You could do a more accurate melanoma diagnosis if you only got rid of, for example, half of that overcalling. If you imagine that only half of the time now that people are calling it melanoma when it isn’t, that you could have figured that out just by looking at it with this microscope, that’s billions of dollars a year in savings in health care costs."

Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer and is the most difficult to detect. Warren’s study is published in Science Translational Medicine.