Profile: Electro-Optical Sciences, Inc. (MELA.O)

Electro-Optical Sciences, Inc. (EOS) is a medical device company focused on the design and development of a non-invasive, point-of-care instrument to assist in the early diagnosis of melanoma. EOS's flagship product, MelaFind, features a hand-held imaging device that emits light of multiple wavelengths to capture images of suspicious pigmented skin lesions and extract data. The data is then analyzed against EOS's database of melanomas and benign lesions using its algorithms in order to provide information to the physician and produce a recommendation of whether the lesion should be biopsied.

MelaFind is a non-invasive system for assisting in the early detection of melanoma. The hand-held imaging device comprises several components, including an illuminator that shines 10 different specific wavelengths of light, including near infra-red bands; a lens system composed of nine elements that creates images of the light reflected from the lesions; a photon (light) sensor, and an image processor employing algorithms to extract many discrete characteristics or features from the images. EOS's database of pigmented skin lesions, which includes in vivo MelaFind images and corresponding histological results of over 9,000 biopsied lesions from approximately 7,000 patients over 30 clinics.

The brain of the MelaFind system, the Lesion Classifier, distinguishes melanoma from non-melanoma using the lesion features extracted and measured by the hand-held imaging device. The Lesion Classifiers are developed from EOS's database of pigmented skin lesions and mathematical algorithms. The mathematical formulas and algorithms used by the Lesion Classifiers are devised and optimized through the process of classifier training using lesions from the Company's database.