Melanocytic cutaneous neoplasms could be basically divided into benign and malignant lesions. The for-mer are melanotic spots (freckles, lentigo, etc. which are caused by hyperfunction and hyperplasia of mela-nocytes), and melanocytic nevi (congenital, common acquired, Spitz, blue nevi, etc. which are hamartomas and benign tumours). The latter are malignant melanomas. We give notice of nonmelanocytic lesions in the differential diagnosis of melanoma. The clinical examination by experienced dermatologists is still the basic diagnostic meťhod in patients with pigmented skin lesions. Dermatoscopy is a noninvasive second-step proceduře which increases the diagnostic certainity in difficult cases and reduces the number of needless sur-gical excisions. The digital version of dermatoscopy makes the high-quality follow-up of patients with mul-tiple or atypical melanocytic lesions posssible, it also enables the comparison of actual dermatoscopic images with other lesions from a database or atlas. Digital analysis of dermatoscopic images provides objec-tive information about the geometrie, structural and color characteristics of the lesion. The results of digital analysis cannot replace the clinical examination of patients with melanocytic lesions. We describe the basic recommendations for the examination of patients with pigmented skin lesions

        Key words: melanocyte - melanocytic lesions - differential diagnosis - dermatoscopy - digital dermatoscopy