Title: Enhanced ultrasound images denoising technique

Authors: Shaimaa A. El-said

Addresses: Electronics and Communications Department, Zagazig University, P.O. Box 44519, Zagazig, Egypt

Abstract: In ultrasound images, the noise can restrain information which is valuable for the general practitioner. Although sigma filter has been shown to be a good solution both in terms of filtering accuracy and computational complexity, it depends on estimating both the mean and variance manually. This paper presents an Enhanced Ultrasound Images Denoising (EUID) technique for speckle noise suppression in ultrasound images. This technique estimates automatically speckle noise amount in the ultrasound images by estimating important input parameters of the filter and then denoise the image using the sigma filter. The experimental results show that the proposed technique is a valuable tool for estimating speckle standard deviation, being accurate, less tedious and preventing typical human errors associated with manual tasks in addition to preserving the edges from the image. A comparative study is made on the performances of the EUID technique and other filters in removing the speckles from the image and in preserving the edges.

Keywords: ultrasound images; speckle reduction; image denoising; automatic estimation; noise reduction; sigma filter; noise estimation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBET.2012.049368

International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, 2012 Vol.10 No.2, pp.185 - 198

Published online: 12 Dec 2014 *

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