Computer-aided clinical image analysis for non-invasive assessment of tumor thickness in cutaneous melanoma.

One hundred fifty-six lesions were included in the final analysis. The mean tumor thickness was 1.84 mm (range 0.2-25). Melanoma thickness was strongly correlated with overall surface area, maximum diameter, perimeter and mean lesion radius. Thickness was moderately correlated with eccentricity, green color and blue color. We conclude that geometrical and color parameters, as objectively extracted by computer-aided clinical image processing, may correlate with tumor thickness in patients with cutaneous melanoma. However, these correlations are not strong enough to reliably predict tumor thickness.