Abstract

Info

Author(s):: HUI Zhao; HUANG Huiming; School of Physics and Technology, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China

Keywords:: Keywords: image processing; ultrasound image; ratio distance; denoising algorithm; Rayleigh distribution

Abstract:: Abstract: For the Rayleigh distribution characteristics of ultrasound image noises, a new adaptive ultrasound image denoising method is improved to overcome the shortcoming of insufficient filtering in the edge direction when the fixed window contains edges. Adaptively scalable filter window is adopted in the study. For the ultrasound image noises with Rayleigh distribution characteristics, the ratio distance is firstly introduced to obtain the similarity distance between the pixels of ultrasound images. Then the mean value of the neighborhood image blocks of the pixel is considered to solve the problem of comparison between the similarity distances. Finally, the pixel is stretched in 8 directions according to the new similarity distance, and an irregular shaped filtering window is obtained for denoising. The experiments with simulated ultrasound images and clinical ultrasound images show that the proposed algorithm is superior to the classical algorithms. The proposed algorithm is more suitable for removing the speckle noise of the ultrasound image and preserving the edge of the detail while removing the noises.