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Background: Many research groups have recently developed equipments and statistical methods enabling pattern classification of pigmented skin lesions. To differentiate between benign and malignant ones, the mathematical extraction of digital patterns together with the use of appropriate statistical approaches is a challenging task., Objective: To design a simple scoring model that provides accurate classification of benign and malignant palmo-plantar pigmented skin lesions, by evaluation of parameters obtained by digital dermoscopy analysis (DDA)., Patients and Methods: In the present study we used a digital dermoscopy analyser to evaluate a series of 445 palmo-plantar melanocytic skin lesion images (25 melanomas 420 nevi). Area under the receiver operator curve, sensitivity and specificity were calculated to evaluate the diagnostic performance of our scoring model for the differentiation of benign and malignant palmo-plantar melanocytic lesions., Results: Model performance reached a very high value (0.983). The DDA parameters selected by the model that proved statistically significant were: area, peripheral dark regions, total imbalance of colours, entropy, dark area and red and blue multicomponent. When all seven model variables were used in a multivariate mode, setting sensitivity at 100% to avoid false negatives, we estimated a minimum specificity of about 80%., Conclusions: Simplicity of use and effectiveness of implementation are important requirements for the success of quantitative methods in routine clinical practice. Scoring systems meet these requirements. Their outcomes are accessible in real time without the use of any data processing system, thus allowing decisions to be made quickly and effectively., (© 2012 The Authors. Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology © 2012 European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology.)

Background: The term 'common mole', often used to describe a subset of benign pigmented skin lesions, is traditionally defined on the basis of morpho-chromatic features. In recent years, certain research groups have developed equipment and methods, such as digital dermoscopy analysis, that enable objective evaluation of pigmented skin lesions., Objective: In this study we use a digital dermoscopy analyser trained for the recognition of pigmented skin lesions to compare the subjective definition of 'common' and the mathematical concept of 'close to the mean of measurements'., Methods: A subset (100) of digital images of flat pigmented lesions, obtained in daily practice, were classified by trained and non-expert clinicians as common moles (60) or clear-cut melanoma (40), and processed with a DB-Mips analyser. The resulting parameters, validated by a classifier, were used to evaluate Hotelling's T2 multivariate distances from the mean., Results: 'Common' moles could not be clearly defined in terms of closeness to the means of objectively evaluated parameters. Their diagnosis indudes many other evaluations and clusters of variables., Conclusion: The clinical semantics of the term 'common' does not conform to any unambiguous mathematical definition.