Questions worth asking
Especially the awkward ones about what the app does and does not do with your photographs. If yours is not here, ask it in the survey — there is a free text box at the end.
The app
Is Mole Detective available yet?
No. It is in active development and is not released. This site is here to explain what is being built and to collect feedback on it before that happens.
What does Mole Detective actually do?
It manages and tracks photographs of your moles. It finds the moles in a photo, keeps the same mole matched up between one session and the next, and measures how the images differ. That is the whole scope: a photo record, kept organised.
Will it tell me anything about my skin?
No. Mole Detective does not examine you, does not assess anything, and gives no opinion on what its measurements mean. Anything to do with your health is a conversation to have with a qualified healthcare professional, not with an app.
How accurate is the detection?
Good enough to find the great majority of visible moles in a well-lit photo, and it improves as the models are retrained. It does miss things - very pale moles, moles in shadow, moles under hair - which is why you can add and remove them by hand.
Do I need any special equipment?
A phone camera and somewhere with reasonable light. A helper for the back photos makes life much easier. Nothing else is required, though close-up shots taken through a dermatoscope work fine if you happen to own one.
What if I have hundreds of moles?
That is the case the app is built for. The point of automatic detection and matching is that the work does not scale with the number of moles you have - you review the handful whose photos look different, not the whole set.
Photos and privacy
Who can see my photos?
You. Images are stored in encrypted object storage and served only to your signed-in account. They are not published, not shared with other users, and not sold.
Are my photos used to train the models?
Only if you opt in. There is an explicit consent checkbox at registration, separate from the terms, and it is off unless you tick it. Training data is stripped of anything identifying before it is used.
Can I delete everything?
Yes. Deleting an upload removes the underlying image from storage rather than hiding it, and deleting your account removes your images with it.
Do the photos have to leave my phone?
Yes, at least briefly. Detection and matching need more compute than a phone provides, so the processing happens on our servers and an image has to be uploaded for it. What we are looking at is whether the library itself can live on your device instead of in your account - uploading a photo to be processed and then discarded rather than stored. How much people care about that is one of the things the survey asks.
Using it well
How often should I take photos?
Whatever interval suits you - it is your record, and the app will remind you on the schedule you set. Consistency matters more than frequency: two sets a year taken the same way compare far better than six taken carelessly.
What should I do if a mole photo looks different?
Take it to a qualified healthcare professional, and take the photo history with you - that is exactly what the record is for. Mole Detective cannot tell you what a difference means and will not try to.
What if the app finds no difference?
That is a statement about two photographs, nothing more. It is not a check-up and not a reassurance, and it should never be a reason to put off speaking to a healthcare professional about something that concerns you.
Pricing and access
What will Mole Detective cost?
Not decided. Storing and processing images has a real cost, so it will not be entirely free, but the shape of it - subscription, one-off, pay per export - is genuinely open. The survey asks what you would find reasonable, and the answers will decide it.
Which platforms will it run on?
A mobile app for iOS and Android, plus this web app for reviewing your history on a bigger screen. Which of those you would actually use is another survey question.
Can I try it before launch?
There is a box at the end of the survey to register interest in the beta. Leave an email address and you will hear from us when there is something to try.