Canadian clinicians create free online mpox image atlas

Physicians and patients now have access to a free collection of images of mpox infections. The image atlas, developed by University of Toronto and Unity Health Toronto clinicians, aims to help detect mpox earlier. The atlas has more than 60 images, and contributors plan to add more images when available. It features a range of skin tones.The images are of participants in the ongoing Mpox prospective observational cohort study and were collected during the global 2022 outbreak. Part of the impetus for the atlas was to ensure a more accurate portrayal of who was contracting mpox.“We started seeing some pretty stigmatizing messages in the media about who is to blame, who is most commonly affected by mpox and where it came from. A lot of the images being used were only of Black skin, which was also stigmatizing and presented an untrue picture of the whole situation in 2022,” Dr. Sharon Sukhdeo, an infectious diseases physician at Sinai Health and an assistant professor of medicine at University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine said in a university press release.Other resources often only have a few images of mpox infections, and most are on Black skin. Clinicians were having a hard time diagnosing the infection because they were seeing lesions with different sizes, in different quantities, and on varying skin tones. “The lesions may look different from what you read about in the textbooks, and they may also differ from patient to patient. As a result, there were a lot of delays in diagnosis because doctors were not recognizing it, especially early on in 2022,” Dr. Sukhdeo said. “We saw an opportunity to not only change the narrative, but to correct it.”The project was supported by Unity Health Toronto’s knowledge translation program. Dr. Darrel Tan, an infectious disease specialist at Unity Health Toronto, heads the Options Lab that coordinated the mpox prospective observational cohort study. Dr. Sukhdeo, Dr. Tan and colleagues collaborated to create the image atlas. The mpox prospective observational cohort study image atlas is available at mpoxatlas.com.

Canadian clinicians create free online mpox image atlas

Register for free access or login.

Related Topics