About this project

Where it came from

DetectMelanoma.com was registered on September 7, 2011, the same day as its companion domain MelaScan.com, with the intention of building a computer-assisted melanoma detection tool. Both have been held continuously by the same owner ever since.

The tool has not been built. Software that analyzes an image of a skin lesion to determine whether it is malignant is a regulated medical device in the United States, and building one responsibly means clinical trials, a quality system, and a regulatory submission, not a weekend model. That was the right conclusion in 2011 and it is still the right conclusion; the AI page sets out exactly what the bar looks like today.

What was left over was the research. This site is that research, written up properly: the material a person actually needs in order to understand how melanoma gets found, and who to see.

Editorial rules

• Every factual claim is sourced. Statistics come from the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute’s SEER program. Clinical descriptions come from the American Academy of Dermatology, the ACS, and academic medical centers. Regulatory statements come from the FDA, FTC, and USPSTF. Each page lists its sources with links, so you can check anything here against the body that published it.
• Quotations are marked as quotations. Where a definition matters, the ABCDE criteria or the USPSTF’s finding, the original wording is quoted rather than paraphrased, because paraphrase is where accuracy usually goes.
• Dates are shown. Every page carries a review date. Guidance changes, and a page that does not tell you how old it is cannot be evaluated.
• Uncertainty is stated. Where the evidence is genuinely unsettled, as it is for routine whole-body screening in people with no symptoms, the page says so rather than picking the more comfortable answer.

What this site does not do

• It does not assess your skin. There is no image upload, no quiz, and no risk score, not even a cautious one. The FTC’s 2015 orders in this category reach risk assessment as well as diagnosis, and for good reason: a color-coded rating is a medical claim wearing a costume.
• It carries no advertising and no affiliate links. Nothing here earns a commission if you click it. Where a commercial product is named, a cleared device or an app, it is named because the evidence about it is relevant.
• It does not collect health information. There is no form here and nothing to fill in. The contact address is for correspondence about the site; please do not send medical details or photographs to it, because they cannot be reviewed and will not be.

Corrections

If you find an error (a misquoted figure, an outdated guideline, a source that no longer says what it is cited for) please report it. Corrections are made promptly and the review date is updated when a page changes materially.