Can you check if a mole is potentially cancerous just by taking a photo of it?
That is the idea behind Pigment, an AI-powered app developed by Grade 10 Argyle Secondary student Adam Brayford.
Brayford has been named a 2025 finalist in Apple’s Swift Student Developer Challenge for his innovation.
The Swift Student Challenge invites youth from around the globe to showcase their creativity and coding skills by developing apps using Apple’s Swift programming language. Brayford secured a place among the top 350 student developers worldwide.
“I was on vacation when I received the email about winning, and my family was ecstatic,” Brayford said. “It truly made the trip. It’s quite surreal, especially since it was my first time applying for the competition, and I actually won. I’m really happy about it.”
Initially inspired by global natural disasters, Brayford began developing an app focused on emergency preparedness. However, he soon pivoted to a more personal mission – creating Pigment, a tool to help detect skin cancer early.
“A few of my mom’s friends have died of cancer,” Brayford said. “It would be meaningful to me if I could make a difference. If my app could at least help one person, maybe get a mole checked out and removed, that would make it all worth it.”
Currently, a dermatologist visit is required to detect melanoma, which involves a sample of the mole being removed and sent to a lab. Pigment won’t replace that, Bray ford said, but it will help with early detection.
“With a photo uploaded to it, the app will indicate if a mole is serious or not, allowing users to then follow up with a dermatologist for a more detailed examination,” he said.
Pigment is designed for self-checking and operates completely offline, ensuring user privacy as images never leave the device. On top of using Swift to develop the app, Brayford also used Core ML to incorporate AI.
Brayford said he trained the AI model by using a large dataset of melanoma images from data science platform Kaggle.
“I trained several AI models and downloaded many different datasets to find the right fit,” Brayford said. “Initially, I only achieved about 70 per cent accuracy, which is decent but insufficient for user confidence. It took approximately four iterations of training this AI model to reach a 93 per cent accuracy rate.”
The North Van app developer’s coding knowledge is largely self-taught, though he received mentorship from Argyle’s Digital Media Academy teachers and he also took courses in a coding school where he now teaches.
As one of the finalists in the challenge, Brayford is granted a free year to develop and publish the app, but not until he turns 18.
“I am committed to publishing it in the future. I’ll need to find a new dataset, but with my enhanced knowledge, I’m confident I can make the app even better than before,” Brayford said.
While only the top 50 finalists are invited to Apple’s headquarters in California, Brayford is already looking ahead to next year’s competition with renewed determination.
As a finalist, Brayford received a certificate of recognition from Apple and a set of AirPods.
Shobana Shanmugasamy is a student intern reporting for the North Shore News. She can be reached at [email protected].
