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110
Main Programme
Saturday 11th June 2011
Main Programme
Clinical Associate Professor Amanda Oakley
Photography of the Skin - Concurrent Workshop
Saturday, 11 June 2011 Start 4:30pm Duration: 60mins Skellerup
Dermatological photography is increasingly undertaken in general practice to document a condition,
aid in follow-up, or to obtain a specialist opinion. Almost everyone owns at least one digital camera,
including inexpensive consumer devices, sophisticated DSLR cameras and mobile phones. Editing and
archiving software are also necessary.
Obtain patient consent for photography, preferably in writing, outlining its purpose. If you plan to send
the image to someone else, explain that its use will then be out of your control. Minimise photographs
that might identify the patient should it be uploaded to Facebook, Wikipedia or porn sites (face, tattoos,
jewellery).
Prepare by ensuring plain, non-reflective grey / blue / green background and plenty of uniform ambient
light. Use a large image size and best quality JPG compression – you can reduce file size later if you are
short of storage space. Although the automatic settings are often adequate, consider altering white
balance to suit the lighting and reducing aperture to increase depth of field. Flash is usually best but
can be difficult with macro photography. Hold the camera still and perpendicular to the subject. Many
cameras struggle to focus on the skin; if so, fix focus on a straight line (pen mark, transparent ruler, skincoloured
paper or fabric).
Take several pictures to include a regional view to show site or distribution of the skin complaint as well
as close-up and macro photographs. Make sure they are in focus and properly exposed. It can be helpful
to include a rule to indicate the size of a skin lesion. Dermoscopic photographs are valuable, particularly
for pigmented lesions.
Save the original image to your computer before editing a copy. Filenames might be those provided
by the camera or your image archiving software – date-time names are helpful. Annotate the file with
keyword metadata to identify the patient (NHI or practice ID number, not name) and diagnosis to easily
find the picture in the future.
Reduce the file size for emailing – use editing or archiving software to save copies of 640 x 480 px images.
If sensitive subject, encrypt or upload to secure password-protected environment. Multiple images can
be compressed into a zip file.
Notes
09-12 June 2011 | Energy Events Centre | Rotorua