DESPECKLING IN ULTRASOUND IMAGE USING SPATIAL FILTERS

Abstract

Ultrasound imaging is a widely used and safe medical diagnostic technique, due to its non-invasive nature, low cost and capability of forming real time imaging Speckle noise is the main type of noise that determines the quality of ultrasound images. Therefore, speckle reduction techniques have become an interesting research topic in recent years. Filter techniques to despeckling include linear filters, nonlinear filters, diffusion filters and wavelet filters. There are a lot of speckle filters that have been developed on the basis of the above techniques. This article evaluates some of the typical speckle filters in order to point out advantages and disadvantages of each method. This will serve as the basis for proposing spatial filters with many advantages and basic criteria to overcome the remaining limitations.