Dermatoscope
A dermatoscope is a handheld magnifier with its own light source, held against the skin to examine it. It reveals patterns of pigment and small blood vessels below the surface that cannot be seen with the naked eye.
The instrument a clinician presses gently against your skin during an examination is almost always this. It combines magnification with a controlled light source, and often a fluid or gel between the lens and the surface.
That fluid is doing something specific. Skin reflects a great deal of light straight back, and removing the air gap reduces the reflection, letting light enter the skin instead of bouncing off it. Some instruments achieve the same effect with polarised light. Either way the result is that a clinician sees into the skin rather than merely at it.
What becomes visible are structures at and just below the junction between epidermis and dermis: patterns of pigment distribution and arrangements of small vessels. Those patterns are what clinicians assess, and they are quite different from what a lesion looks like from a foot away.
Nothing is removed, nothing is injected, and it does not hurt beyond light pressure. Images can be captured through it and kept for comparison at a later appointment, which is one of the more useful things it makes possible.
Time spent on a single area is not, by itself, a signal of concern. Careful looking is exactly what the instrument exists for.
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