Another powerful tool in the screening and detection of skin cancer is Dermoscopy. In its simplest form, dermoscopy is the use of a specially lighted magnifying device for observing the microscopic structure of moles and other skin lesions. Used along with digital photography, dermoscopy is a painless, non-invasive technique for analyzing and monitoring moles and other skin lesions. While still relatively new in the United States, dermoscopy has been used extensively in Australia and New Zealand (countries with 6 times as many patients with melanoma as the U.S) along with many Northern European countries for over a decade. In clinical trials, dermoscopy has been shown to improve diagnostic accuracy over the “naked eye” exam by as much as 27%. Dermoscopy allows the doctor to safely diagnose many benign skin lesions that would otherwise be removed because they meet the “A, B, C, D, E” criteria for melanoma. Likewise, dermoscopy can allow the detection of some melanomas BEFORE they acquire the “A, B, C, D, E” criteria. Dermoscopy is also useful for diagnosing basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma as well as a host of other, non-cancerous skin lesions. Dermoscopy helps the doctor to determine the most suspicious part of large moles or suspected cancerous lesions to have the best chance of making the correct diagnosis when only a small part of a lesion is removed for biopsy. It also enables the doctor to more accurately determine the margins of suspected cancerous lesions which improves the chances that the lesion is fully removed during excision.