SPADE: Superpixel Adjacency Driven Embedding for Three-Class Melanoma Segmentation

The accurate segmentation of pigmented skin lesions is a critical prerequisite for reliable melanoma detection, yet approximately 30% of lesions exhibit fuzzy or poorly defined borders. This ambiguity makes the definition of a single contour unreliable and limits the effectiveness of computer-assisted diagnosis (CAD) systems. While clinical assessment based on the ABCDE criteria (asymmetry, border, color, diameter, and evolution), dermoscopic imaging, and scoring systems remains the standard, these methods are inherently subjective and vary with clinician experience. We address this challenge by reframing segmentation into three distinct regions: background, border, and lesion core. These regions are delineated using superpixels generated via the Simple Linear Iterative Clustering (SLIC) algorithm, which provides meaningful structural units for analysis. Our contributions are fourfold: (1) redefining lesion borders as regions, rather than sharp lines; (2) generating superpixel-level embeddings with a transformer-based autoencoder; (3) incorporating these embeddings as features for superpixel classification; and (4) integrating neighborhood information to construct enhanced feature vectors. Unlike pixel-level algorithms that often overlook boundary context, our pipeline fuses global class information with local spatial relationships, significantly improving precision and recall in challenging border regions. An evaluation on the HAM10000 melanoma dataset demonstrates that our superpixel–RAG–transformer (region adjacency graph) pipeline achieves exceptional performance (100% F1 score, accuracy, and precision) in classifying background, border, and lesion core superpixels. By transforming raw dermoscopic images into region-based structured representations, the proposed method generates more informative inputs for downstream deep learning models. This strategy not only advances melanoma analysis but also provides a generalizable framework for other medical image segmentation and classification tasks.