Nonlinear diffusion in Laplacian pyramid domain for ultrasonic speckle reduction
A new speckle reduction method, i.e., Laplacian pyramid-based nonlinear diffusion (LPND), is proposed for medical ultrasound imaging. With this method, speckle is removed by nonlinear diffusion filtering of...
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Main Authors: | , , , |
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Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
Published: |
2010
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/92050 http://hdl.handle.net/10220/6337 |
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Institution: | Nanyang Technological University |
Language: | English |
Summary: | A new speckle reduction method, i.e., Laplacian
pyramid-based nonlinear diffusion (LPND), is proposed for medical
ultrasound imaging. With this method, speckle is removed
by nonlinear diffusion filtering of bandpass ultrasound images
in Laplacian pyramid domain. For nonlinear diffusion in each
pyramid layer, a gradient threshold is automatically determined
by a variation of median absolute deviation (MAD) estimator.
The performance of the proposed LPND method has been compared
with that of other speckle reduction methods, including
the recently proposed speckle reducing anisotropic diffusion
(SRAD) and nonlinear coherent diffusion (NCD). In simulation
and phantom studies, an average gain of 1.55 dB and 1.34 dB
in contrast-to-noise ratio was obtained compared to SRAD and
NCD, respectively. The visual comparison of despeckled in vivo
ultrasound images from liver and carotid artery shows that the
proposed LPND method could effectively preserve edges and
detailed structures while thoroughly suppressing speckle. These
preliminary results indicate that the proposed speckle reduction
method could improve image quality and the visibility of small
structures and fine details in medical ultrasound imaging. |
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