Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Tests and diagnosis
By Mayo Clinic staffHaving a regular examination of your eyes by a physician eye specialist (ophthalmologist) is the first and most important step in early detection and diagnosis of eye melanoma.
Your doctor will examine the outside of your eye, looking for enlarged blood vessels that can indicate a tumor inside your eye. Then, with the help of instruments, your doctor will look inside your eye. One method, called ophthalmoscopy, uses lenses and a bright light mounted on your doctor's forehead — a bit like a miner's lamp. Another method, called slit-lamp biomicroscopy, uses a microscope that produces an intense beam or line of light to illuminate the interior of your eye.
In most cases, looking inside your eye alone will be enough to detect and diagnose any tumors or other abnormalities.
Further evaluation of suspected melanoma
If your doctor suspects you may have eye melanoma, you may undergo one of a number of imaging tests:
-
Ultrasound. This painless procedure uses high-frequency sound waves from a hand-held, wand-like apparatus called a transducer, which can produce precise images of structures within your body. It's an important test for diagnosing and evaluating eye tumors. Eye melanomas often have a characteristic appearance on the ultrasound. Your doctor also uses ultrasound to measure the thickness of the tumor to help determine the most appropriate treatment. The initial ultrasound further provides a baseline measurement for comparison as you go through your treatment plan.
In this test you sit in a chair in your doctor's office. The transducer is placed against either your eyelid or the front surface of your eye, in which case your eye is numbed with anesthetizing drops. A lubricant placed on the transducer may run down your cheek, but the procedure itself doesn't cause discomfort or pain. There may be some discomfort after the procedure has been completed if the surface of the cornea becomes scratched during the test, but this usually gets better within hours.
- Angiography. Angiography is a process that uses dyes to help your doctor better visualize parts of your body. In a procedure called fluorescein angiography, your doctor injects a yellow dye into a vein in your arm. The dye circulates in your eyes, highlighting the blood vessels in your retina and providing information about the characteristics of the tumor. A camera with special filters takes flash pictures every few seconds for several minutes, providing your doctor with useful images. Another procedure called indocyanine green angiography involves injecting a green dye. Again, using special filters, your doctor can obtain useful images that may help define the characteristics of a tumor.
Determining further spread of the cancer
Your doctor may also recommend additional diagnostic procedures to determine whether the cancer has spread (metastasized) to other parts of your body, such as your liver or your lungs. Eye melanoma can spread through your bloodstream. Tests may include:
- Blood tests. Blood tests to measure the function of your liver are commonly ordered at the time an eye melanoma is first discovered, as well as during follow-up visits. Abnormalities may indicate whether the melanoma has spread to your liver.
- Chest X-ray. Your doctor may use this procedure to determine whether your eye cancer has spread to your lungs. This is unlikely unless the cancer is in advanced stages.
-
Computerized tomography (CT). Computerized tomography is an X-ray technique that produces images of your internal organs that are more detailed than are those produced by conventional X-ray exams. Conventional X-ray exams use a stationary X-ray machine to focus beams of radiation on a particular area of your body to produce two-dimensional images. CT scans use an X-ray-generating device that rotates around your body and a powerful computer to create cross-sectional images of the inside of your body.
Often, after the first set of X-rays is taken, a contrast dye is injected intravenously and a second set of pictures is taken. The dye helps better outline structures in your body.
If you have an eye melanoma, the CT scan will concentrate on your liver and lungs because they are the most common locations to which an eye melanoma is likely to spread.
- Ultrasonography. Your doctor may have you undergo ultrasonography to generate images of your liver and help determine whether the cancer has spread to your liver.
- Magnetic resonance imaging. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a technique that uses a magnetic field and radio waves to create cross-sectional images of your head and body. Your doctor uses these detailed, clear images to identify and diagnose a wide range of conditions. MRI is a noninvasive way for your doctor to examine your body. In some cases, contrast agents are injected into your veins to enhance the appearance of certain tissues or blood vessels in the images. Doctors don't routinely use MRI to assess eye melanomas because they can usually obtain the information they need by other, less expensive, methods above.
Tissue sample
If your doctor isn't sure whether a tumor is a melanoma, he or she may obtain a tissue sample (biopsy). This is usually done by removing a small sample of tumor cells from your eye. These cells are then evaluated in the laboratory. However, doctors usually can make a confident diagnosis of eye melanoma using methods other than biopsy.
