A method for discriminating between benign and malignant skin lesions, the method comprising the steps of: generating an image of a skin lesion; performing relative reflectance calibration of the image, wherein the image undergoes relative reflectance calibration comprising measuring intensity of each pixel due to backscattering for a corresponding pixel from a target having a Lambert surface; performing compression of the image wherein the image of the skin lesion is replaced with a smoothed image having 10 times less spatial resolution than the image; performing zooming of the image to create lesion and surrounding area masks in the image; creating, for each of a plurality of physiological properties and morphological parameters, a spatial distribution map covering the area of the skin lesion from the image of the skin lesion; determining entropy values for each of the spatial distribution maps; determining cross entropy values between pairs of the spatial distribution maps; determining, from image, a plurality of morphological parameters; deriving, from the spatial distribution maps of physiological properties and morphological parameters, a plurality of additional diagnostic parameters, the additional diagnostic parameters being selected from the group consisting of maximum value of melanin optical depth; architectural disorder; blood filling; angiogenesis; ratio of blood oxygenation in an area surrounding a lesion border; melanin contrast; blood contrast; high spatial Fourier-components of a map of total melanin optical depth over a lesion area; and entropy of contrast of the map of total melanin optical depth over the lesion area; creating one or more diagnostic indices from the weighted sum of the entropy values, the cross entropy values, the plurality of morphological parameters, and the plurality of additional diagnostic parameters, using one or more weight vectors; determining for each of the one or more diagnostic indices, a reliability value for classification as benign and a reliability value for classification as malignant; and classifying the skin lesion as benign where the reliability value for classification as benign is greater than the reliability value for classification as malignant. generating an image of a skin lesion; performing relative reflectance calibration of the image, wherein the image undergoes relative reflectance calibration comprising measuring intensity of each pixel due to backscattering for a corresponding pixel from a target having a Lambert surface; performing compression of the image wherein the image of the skin lesion is replaced with a smoothed image having 10 times less spatial resolution than the image; performing zooming of the image to create lesion and surrounding area masks in the image; creating, for each of a plurality of physiological properties and morphological parameters, a spatial distribution map covering the area of the skin lesion from the image of the skin lesion; determining entropy values for each of the spatial distribution maps; determining cross entropy values between pairs of the spatial distribution maps; determining, from image, a plurality of morphological parameters; deriving, from the spatial distribution maps of physiological properties and morphological parameters, a plurality of additional diagnostic parameters, the additional diagnostic parameters being selected from the group consisting of maximum value of melanin optical depth; architectural disorder; blood filling; angiogenesis; ratio of blood oxygenation in an area surrounding a lesion border; melanin contrast; blood contrast; high spatial Fourier-components of a map of total melanin optical depth over a lesion area; and entropy of contrast of the map of total melanin optical depth over the lesion area; creating one or more diagnostic indices from the weighted sum of the entropy values, the cross entropy values, the plurality of morphological parameters, and the plurality of additional diagnostic parameters, using one or more weight vectors; determining for each of the one or more diagnostic indices, a reliability value for classification as benign and a reliability value for classification as malignant; and classifying the skin lesion as benign where the reliability value for classification as benign is greater than the reliability value for classification as malignant.