To the Editor.—
I read with interest the article by Illig and co-workers1 on congenital melanocytic nevi and malignant melanoma. Size seems to be an important parameter for the development of melanoma in such nevi. This was also demonstrated by Greely et al,2 who stated that nevi with an area of more than 900 sq mm should be considered as potential precursor lesions.
Although most of the nevi display a rather simple geometric form such as an oval, the statement of just the largest and smallest diameter is not really satisfying. Instead, I would suggest a very simple procedure that allows rapid determination of the actual area of such lesions.
The lesion to be measured is covered by a transparent sheet carrying a lattice or regularly spaced points. According to well-known morphometric principles,3 each point (crossover point) represents an area fraction equal to the whole area divided by
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