Graph-based Pigment Network Detection in Skin Images

Detecting pigmented network is a crucial step for melanoma diagnosis. In this paper, we present a novel graph-based pigment network detection method that can find and visualize round structures belonging to the pigment network. After finding sharp changes of the luminance image by an edge detection function, the resulting binary image is converted to a graph, and then all cyclic sub-graphs are detected. Theses cycles represent meshes that belong to the pigment network. Then, we create a new graph of the cyclic structures based on their distance. According to the density ratio of the new graph of the pigment network, the image is classified as "Absent" or "Present". Being Present means that a pigment network is detected in the skin lesion. Using this approach, we achieved an accuracy of 92.6% on five hundred unseen images.