If you have a wound or irritation on your skin that doesn't seem quite right or isn't healing as it should, chances are it might be some kind of lesion. But is the skin lesion cancerous or not? That's the important question. 

Lesions are defined as almost any type of change on an organ or tissue resulting from disease or injury – and as it so happens, the skin is the largest organ in your body. There are numerous types of lesions with different names, and they are categorized by whether or not they are cancerous. 

A dermatologist can check your skin for marks and determine whether you have a lesion that should be tested. He or she will remove the lesion and send it to the lab for testing. From there, the tests will determine whether the lesion is benign, malignant or has the possibility of becoming malignant. If it the legion is potentially malignant, it is referred to as a premalignant lesion. 

Lesions are often categorized by the pattern they might form, location, the person who first discovered or described them, or their size. There are bulls eye or target lesions named for their shape, coin lesions with round shadows that look like coins on an x-ray, gross lesions (large enough to be seen without magnifying), microscopic lesions, central lesions (of the brain or spinal cord), and more.