What is Melanoma?

Melanoma is a cancer that creates in melanocytes; the pigment cells exist in the skin. It can be more
serious than alternate types of skin malignancy since it might spread to different parts of the body and
cause serious illness and passing. Around 50,000 new instances of melanoma are diagnosed in the
United States each year [1].

Sometimes the primary indication of melanoma is an adjustment in the shape, shading, size, or feel of
existing mole. Be that as it may, melanoma may likewise show up as another mole. People should tell
their specialist if they see any progressions on the skin. The best way to analyze melanoma is to remove
tissue and check it for growth cells.

A changing spot might be an issue, however only one out of every odd change implies tumor. A mole
may appear and after that get greater or become raised but still be only a mole. It is normal for some,
moles to begin flat and dim, become raised and dark, and after that lose a lot of their color. This
procedure takes many years.

Most public-health information about melanoma stresses the so-called ABCDEs:

Asymmetry: One half of the mole is not quite same as the other half.
Border that is irregular: The edges are regularly ragged, scored, or blurred in plot. The shade
may spread into the surrounding of skin.

Color: The spot has a few colors in an unpredictable example or is altogether different
shading than whatever remains of one's moles.

Diameter: The spot is bigger than the size of a pencil eraser

Evolving: The mole is changing in size, shape, color, or overall texture. This may also
include new bleeding.

Methodology:-

Contrast stretching:-
Contrast stretching is a basic image enhancement procedure that attempt to enhance the
difference in a picture by `stretching' the range of intensity it contains. It differs from the
more sophisticated histogram equalization in that it can only apply a linear scaling
function to the image pixel values. As a result the `enhancement' is less harsh.
Contrast stretching is all about increasing the difference between the maximum and minimum
intensity value in an image. Rest of the intensity values are spread out between this range. There
exists a one-to-one relationship of the intensity values between the source image and the target
image.
Histogram Equalization:-
Histogram equalization is about modifying the intensity values of all the pixels in the image .It is
used to enhance contrast. It is not necessary that contrast will always be
increase in this. In some cases histogram equalization can be worse so in this
case contrast is decreased. The problem in histogram equalization is once
histogram equalization is applied then we cannot get the original image.

Methodologies applied:-

Contrast stretching
Both methodologies were applied on images of melanoma but the results were different. First we apply
contrast stretching on the images. By applying contrast stretching we lose some information in the
images. As we lose information in the images we were unable to get the proper results.it produce higher
contrast than the original by darkening the levels below the original image and bright the levels above
the original image.

Histogram Equalization
By applying histogram equalization we get better results than the contrast stretching .In histogram
equalization we did not lose information but get more suitable results.it generates a gray map which
redistribute all pixel values to produce uniform histogram.