Harmless mole or scary melanoma? At Frontiers in Optics 2010, an annual meeting of international optic scientists in Rochester, New York, October 24-28, experts will present a new technique that may help doctors better distinguish between the two.

To visually inspect the surface of a patient's skin, doctors can now use a handheld lens, bright light or microscopes, and a technique called dermoscopy. But recent studies have found that diagnoses based on these images are often problematic, because only the skin's surface is visible, and the dangerous changes lurking beneath can't be detected.