Patent ID: 7162063

Claim:
A method of identifying new or significantly changed skin lesions, comprising: (a) providing digital baseline image data of an area of a subject's skin, by performing the steps of i. positioning a digital camera to frame the area within a field of view of the camera and digitally photographing the area to produce a digital baseline image of the area, and ii. downloading the digital baseline image from the camera to a computer; (b) operating the computer to produce a partially transparent or semi-transparent baseline image that is scaled to fit over a display of the camera; (c) operating a printer to print the baseline image on a relatively transparent sheet to produce a baseline image template; (d) providing digital current image data of the area of the subject's skin a substantial amount of time after step (a), by performing the steps of i. placing the template over the display of a digital camera which may be the same as or different than the digital camera of step (a)(i), ii. positioning that digital camera to frame an area within the field of view of that digital camera so as to align a current live image of the area with the baseline image on the template, and digitally photographing the area to produce a digital current image of the area, and iii. downloading the digital current image from that digital camera to the computer; and (e) operating the computer to alternately display the aligned current image data and the baseline image data on a monitor coupled to the computer to aid visual identification of lesions which are new or have significantly grown.