Enhanced 3D Visualisation of Skin Disorders for Tele-dermatology

When observing a small object, the observer is usually able to interactively manipulate the object, dynamically changing its orientation, continually altering and improving the way light is reflected in order to best view details of 3D shape, colour and texture. Conventional photographs offer only a limited fixed viewpoint, dependent on the object pose and the lighting conditions prevailing at the time of image capture. Consequently, a photograph is often inadequate to satisfactorily convey a sense of shape colouring and subtle surface topography, especially when used to diagnose or document skin conditions for clinical purposes. This paper presents a novel, low cost imaging methodology to allow an enhanced interactive 3D visualisation of pigmented lesions through the transfer of efficiently encoded data via the internet, to provide a more realistic and intuitive visualisation of skin characteristics with particular application to tele-dermatology or enhanced medical records.