Modified Karhunen-Loeve expansion for evaluating skin-colour-associated melanoma risk factors

An approach based on the modified Karhunen-Loeve expansion (MKLE) of consti tutive and facultative skin colour data acquired by colorimeters in melanom a patients and healthy control subjects, was used to identify two colour fe atures defining skin-colour-associated risk of melanoma. None of four commo n statistical classifiers trained on colour features were sufficiently accu rate for allowing skin colour alone to be used for classification purposes, though a Bayesian quadratic classifier matched the transformed data well. This study supersedes the indeterminate character of most common clinical c riteria based on qualitative factors and, irrespective of the results of cl assification, provides objective skin colour information for the prevention of melanoma. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.