Abstract: Skin cancers are the most common forms of human malignancies in fair skinned populations. Although malignant melanoma is the form of skin cancer" with the highest mortality, the non-melanoma skin cancers" (basal cell carcinomas and squamous cell carcinomas, etc.) are far more common. The incidence of both melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancers is increasing, with the number of cases being diagnosed doubling approximately every 15 years. In this manner, early finding of skin cancer can diminish mortality and dreariness of patients. In this paper we are investigating various techniques for early stage melanoma skin cancer detection.

Keywords: skin cancer, Region growing, segmentation, Texture analysis, Edge detection etc.