A novel multiscale nonlinear thresholding method for ultrasonic speckle suppressing

This paper presents a novel speckle suppression method for medical B-scan ultrasonic images. An original image is first separated into two parts with an adaptive filter. These two parts are then transformed into a multiscale wavelet domain and the wavelet coefficients are processed by a soft thresholding method, which is a variation of Donoho's soft thresholding method. The processed coefficients for each part are then transformed back into the space domain. Finally, the denoised image is obtained as the sum of the two processed parts. A computer-simulated image and an in vitro B-scan image of a pig heart have been used to test the performance of this new method. This technique effectively reduces the speckle noise, while preserving the resolvable details. It performs well in comparison to the multiscale thresholding technique without adaptive preprocessing and two other speckle-suppression methods.     

基于小波前向后向扩散的红外图像降噪与边缘增强算法

针对红外图像特点,该文提出了一种基于小波前向后向扩散的红外图像降噪与边缘增强算法。小波前向后向扩散是建立在小波扩散理论的基础上,其继承了小波扩散迭代降噪与边缘保持特性,在此基础上实现了图像的边缘增强。为了克服传统小波扩散基于小波模值的边缘映射的不足,该文利用小波模值与局部奇异性测度的联合概率分布对边缘映射进行初步估计,结合几何约束进行修正,获得准确的边缘映射,并重新设计了小波前向后向扩散系数方程。实验证明算法能有效实现红外图像降噪的同时增强图像边缘。     

利用边缘信息的多尺度分块压缩感知自适应采样方法

在小波域多尺度压缩感知框架下,被完整保留的低频系数存在着许多可利用的图像信息。本文在分析了不同尺度之间、以及同一尺度之内的系数块存在能量差异的基础上,提出了利用边缘信息的多尺度分块压缩感知自适应采样方法(EAS)。该方法首先利用低频系数提取出边缘信息,然后将边缘信息分块,加权计算每个块的边缘信息度,根据边缘信息度判断每个系数块的能量大小,将其转换成每个子块的自适应采样率,从而实现多尺度分块压缩感知的自适应采样。采用医学图像,含有复杂纹理的自然图像和含有严重噪声的SAR图像三类测试数据,验证了EAS方法的性能。数值实验结果表明,EAS方法对不同的压缩感知算法均有很大的提升,能够显著提高图像的重构质量和视觉效果。      

Speckle noise reduction of medical ultrasound images in complex wavelet domain using mixture priors

Speckle noise is an inherent nature of ultrasound images, which may have negative effect on image interpretation and diagnostic tasks. In this paper, we propose several multiscale nonlinear thresholding methods for ultrasound speckle suppression. The wavelet coefficients of the logarithm of image are modeled as the sum of a noise-free component plus an independent noise. Assuming that the noise-free component has some local mixture distribution (MD), and the noise is either Gaussian or Rayleigh, we derive the minimum mean squared error (MMSE) and the averaged maximum ${a quad posteriori}$ (AMAP) estimators for noise reduction. We use Gaussian and Laplacian MD for each noise-free wavelet coefficient to characterize their heavy-tailed property. Since we estimate the parameters of the MD using the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm and local neighbors, the proposed MD incorporates some information about the intrascale dependency of the wavelet coefficients. To evaluate our spatially adaptive despeckling methods, we use both real medical ultrasound and synthetically introduced speckle images for speckle suppression. The simulation results show that our method outperforms several recently and the state-of-the-art techniques qualitatively and quantitatively.      

基于Nakagami分布的自适应斑点抑制与边缘增强方法

超声图像中的特殊斑点噪声严重影响了图像质量,针对此问题提出了一种基于Nakagami分布的自适应斑点抑制与边缘增强方法.根据斑点噪声的Nakagami分布模型,设计一个基于斑点局部统计特性的自适应滤波器.并应用"窄条"技术以不同方向与长度的"窄条"来近似图像的局部线性特性,滤波区域采用"窄条"代替常用的方形窗口,其中"窄条"的方向由假设试验优化方法确定,"窄条"长度与斑点的局部统计特性相关.实验证明,该方法在抑制斑点噪声、保留与增强图像边缘和细节方面均具有良好的性能.     

Speckle reduction and contrast enhancement of echocardiograms viamultiscale nonlinear processing

This paper presents an algorithm for speckle reduction and contrast enhancement of echocardiographic images. Within a framework of multiscale wavelet analysis, the authors apply wavelet shrinkage techniques to eliminate noise while preserving the sharpness of salient features. In addition, nonlinear processing of feature energy is carried out to enhance contrast within local structures and along object boundaries. The authors show that the algorithm is capable of not only reducing speckle, but also enhancing features of diagnostic importance, such as myocardial walls in two-dimensional echocardiograms obtained from the parasternal short-axis view. Shrinkage of wavelet coefficients via soft thresholding within finer levels of scale is carried out on coefficients of logarithmically transformed echocardiograms. Enhancement of echocardiographic features is accomplished via nonlinear stretching followed by hard thresholding of wavelet coefficients within selected (midrange) spatial-frequency levels of analysis. The authors formulate the denoising and enhancement problem, introduce a class of dyadic wavelets, and describe their implementation of a dyadic wavelet transform. Their approach for speckle reduction and contrast enhancement was shown to be less affected by pseudo-Gibbs phenomena. The authors show experimentally that this technique produced superior results both qualitatively and quantitatively when compared to results obtained from existing denoising methods alone. A study using a database of clinical echocardiographic images suggests that such denoising and enhancement may improve the overall consistency of expert observers to manually defined borders     

Speckle Suppression in SAR Images Using the 2-D GARCH Model

A novel Bayesian-based speckle suppression method for Synthetic Aperture Radar ( SAR) images is presented that preserves the structural features and textural information of the scene. First, the logarithmic transform of the original image is analyzed into the multiscale wavelet domain. We show that the wavelet coefficients of SAR images have significantly non-Gaussian statistics that are best described by the 2-D GARCH model. By using the 2-D GARCH model on the wavelet coefficients, we are capable of taking into account important characteristics of wavelet coefficients, such as heavy tailed marginal distribution and the dependencies between the coefficients. Furthermore, we use a maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimator for estimating the clean image wavelet coefficients. Finally, we compare our proposed method with various speckle suppression methods applied on synthetic and actual SAR images and we verify the performance improvement in utilizing the new strategy.     

Moving window-based double Haar wavelet transform for image processing.

Image denoising is a lively research field. The classical nonlinear filters used for image denoising, such as median filter, are based on a local analysis of the pixels within a moving window. Recently, the research of image denoising has been focused on the wavelet domain. Compared to the classical nonlinear filters, it is based on a global multiscale analysis of images. Apparently, the wavelet transform can be embedded in a moving window. Thus, a moving window-based local multiscale analysis is obtained. In this paper, based on the Haar wavelet, a class of nonorthogonal multi-channel filter bank with its corresponding wavelet shrinkage called Lee shrinkage is derived. As a special case of this filter bank, the double Haar wavelet transform is introduced. Examples show that it is suitable for a moving window-based local multiscale analysis used for image denoising, edge detection, and edge enhancement.     

A new multiscale Bayesian algorithm for speckle reduction in medical ultrasound images

This paper introduces a new multiscale speckle reduction method based on the extraction of wavelet interscale dependencies to visually enhance the medical ultrasound images and improve clinical diagnosis. The logarithm of the image is first transformed to the oriented dual-tree complex wavelet domain. It is then shown that the adjacent subband coefficients of the log-transformed ultrasound image can be successfully modeled using the general form of bivariate isotropic stable distributions, while the speckle coefficients can be approximated using a zero-mean bivariate Gaussian model. Using these statistical models, we design a new discrete bivariate Bayesian estimator based on minimizing the mean square error (MSE). To assess the performance of the proposed method, four image quality metrics, namely signal-to-noise ratio, MSE, coefficient of correlation, and edge preservation index, were computed on 80 medical ultrasound images. Moreover, a visual evaluation was carried out by two medical experts. The numerical results indicated that the new method outperforms the standard spatial despeckling filters, homomorphic Wiener filter, and new multiscale speckle reduction methods based on generalized Gaussian and symmetric alpha-stable priors.     

Novel Bayesian multiscale method for speckle removal in medical ultrasound images

A novel speckle suppression method for medical ultrasound images is presented. First, the logarithmic transform of the original image is analyzed into the multiscale wavelet domain. We show that the subband decompositions of ultrasound images have significantly non-Gaussian statistics that are best described by families of heavy-tailed distributions such as the alpha-stable. Then, we design a Bayesian estimator that exploits these statistics. We use the alpha-stable model to develop a blind noise-removal processor that performs a nonlinear operation on the data. Finally, we compare our technique with current state-of-the-art soft and hard thresholding methods applied on actual ultrasound medical images and we quantify the achieved performance improvement.     

AN ADAPTIVE SPECKLE SUPPRESSION AND EDGE ENHANCEMENT TECHNIQUE

Speckle degrades severely the quality of medical B-scan ultrasonic images, especially it blurs edges and details of images. An adaptive speckle suppression and edge enhancement method based on Nakagami distribution is presented. The statistics of log-compressed echo images is derived for Nakagami distribution, An adaptive filter based on local statistical property of speckle is designed. The stick technique that utilizes sticks with different sizes and various orientations is applied to locally approximate certain linear features of image. The local regionis a stick insted of a usual window, the orientation of sticks is decided by hypothesis test optimizing method and the length of sticks is obtained by region growing technique. Performance of the new method has been tested on the phantom and ultrasound images of pig muscle and echocardiographic. The results show that the technique effectively reduces the speckle noise while preserving and enhancing the tissue edge and resolvable details.     

基于复小波方向信息的SAR图像斑点噪声抑制

针对一般小波去噪方法在去除合成孔径雷达(Synthetic Aperture Radar-SAR)图像斑点噪声时不能有效保持图像边缘信息的问题,提出结合双密度双树复小波变换（Double-Density Dual Tree Complex Wavelet Transform –DD_DTCWT）方向信息进行边缘检测的SAR图像噪声抑制算法。本文对边缘检测指标进行改进,利用DD_DTCWT方向复小波系数的相对方差作为边缘检测指标,通过相对方差分布密度函数获取阈值处理的自适应门限,由此实现SAR图像的自适应滤波。实验结果表明,本文提出的边缘检测和主方向高频复系数提升方法可以有效保持并增强图像的边缘信息。与SRAD算法和基于DD_DTCWT的双变量收缩函数（Bivariate Shrinkage Function--BSF）算法相比较,本文算法具有更好的边缘保持能力。      

Despeckling low SNR, low contrast ultrasound images via anisotropic level set diffusion

Speckle is a form of multiplicative and locally correlated noise which degrades the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and contrast resolution of ultrasound images. This paper presents a new anisotropic level set method for despeckling low SNR, low contrast ultrasound images. The coefficient of variation, a speckle-robust edge detector is embedded in the well known geodesic “snakes” model to smooth the image level sets, while preserving and sharpening edges of a speckled image. The method achieves much better speckle suppression and edge preservation compared to the traditional anisotropic diffusion based despeckling filters. In addition, the performance of the filter is less sensitive to the speckle scale of the image and edge contrast parameter, which makes it more suitable for the detection of low contrast features in an ultrasound image. We validate the method using both synthetic and real ultrasound images and quantify the performance improvement over other state-of-the-art algorithms in terms of speckle noise reduction and edge preservation indices.     

二进小波增强与边缘局部信息FCM的SAR图像变化检测

合成孔径雷达图像中固有的相干斑噪声往往导致变化检测结果中存在大量虚警与漏警。针对这一问题,本文提出一种利用二进小波增强与边缘局部信息模糊C均值的变化检测方法。首先利用二进小波对对数比差异图进行自适应增强,平抑噪声的同时均衡灰度分布;然后,利用指数加权均值比算子对差异图进行边缘信息提取,修正局部信息模糊C均值算法中邻域窗内像素点权值,使邻域窗滑动至变化区域的边缘部分时能够对噪声切向平抑,保留细节信息。最后对差异图进行分割,得到变化检测结果二值图。仿真与实测数据实验结果表明,本文方法能够有效抑制相干斑噪声,同时对变化区域的细节保持效果较好。      

医学图像增强系统设计

为了改善医学图像的视觉效果,提高图像的清晰度,使之更适合于机器的分析处理以及人的视觉特性,并突出病灶点,为病理学诊断和临床诊断提供可靠依据。设计了一个对医学图像十分具有针对性的图像增强系统。针对CT图像的电子噪声提出了基于修正维纳滤波的小波包去噪算法;针对B型超声图像的散斑噪声提出了基于脉冲耦合神经网络(PCNN)模型的小波自适应斑点噪声滤除算法;针对医学图像对比度低,边缘信息模糊等特点,提出了基于小波变换的医学图像增强算法。当噪声方差为0.01时,基于脉冲耦合神经网络(PCNN)模型的小波自适应斑点噪声滤除算法获得的PSNR比经Wiener滤波方法获得的PSNR高出9 dB。系统能快速找到噪声点进行定点去噪,能有效提高医学图像的对比度,增强边缘细节信息,突出病灶点的位置,从而达到较好的处理效果,为医疗工作者观察病症提供更加清晰准确的依据。     

Spatially adaptive wavelet-based multiscale image restoration

In this paper, we present a new spatially adaptive approach to the restoration of noisy blurred images, which is particularly effective at producing sharp deconvolution while suppressing the noise in the flat regions of an image. This is accomplished through a multiscale Kalman smoothing filter applied to a prefiltered observed image in the discrete, separable, 2-D wavelet domain. The prefiltering step involves constrained least-squares filtering based on optimal choices for the regularization parameter. This leads to a reduction in the support of the required state vectors of the multiscale restoration filter in the wavelet domain and improvement in the computational efficiency of the multiscale filter. The proposed method has the benefit that the majority of the regularization, or noise suppression, of the restoration is accomplished by the efficient multiscale filtering of wavelet detail coefficients ordered on quadtrees. Not only does this lead to potential parallel implementation schemes, but it permits adaptivity to the local edge information in the image. In particular, this method changes filter parameters depending on scale, local signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and orientation. Because the wavelet detail coefficients are a manifestation of the multiscale edge information in an image, this algorithm may be viewed as an "edge-adaptive" multiscale restoration approach.     

Gray and color image contrast enhancement by the curvelet transform

We present a new method for contrast enhancement based on the curvelet transform. The curvelet transform represents edges better than wavelets, and is therefore well-suited for multiscale edge enhancement. We compare this approach with enhancement based on the wavelet transform, and the multiscale retinex. In a range of examples, we use edge detection and segmentation, among other processing applications, to provide for quantitative comparative evaluation. Our findings are that curvelet based enhancement out-performs other enhancement methods on noisy images, but on noiseless or near noiseless images curvelet based enhancement is not remarkably better than wavelet based enhancement.     

基于模糊PCNN的小波域超声医学图像去噪方法

在分析了斑点噪声和PCNN的特点的基础上,将PCNN引入到小波域中,并结合小波软阈值去噪思想,提出了基于PCNN的超声医学图像软阈值去噪方法(ST-PCNN),该方法的优点是实现了在小波域中利用PCNN来识别高频信号的小波系数,并采用相应的方法处理小波系数,改善了PCNN难以确定斑点噪声的位置和采用固定阈值造成高频信号损失的缺点,更好的保留了低于固定阈值的高频信号的小波系数;在此基础上,将模糊算法引入到PCNN模型中,进一步提出了基于模糊PCNN的小波域超声医学图像去噪方法(F-PCNN-WD),该方法利用模糊算法来去除PCNN点火过程中大于点火阈值的斑点噪声的小波系数,以更好的去除斑点噪声。实验结果表明,ST-PCNN和F-PCNN-WD方法不仅能够有效地去除噪声,而且能够很好的保留图像的边缘和细节信息。     

Speckle reducing anisotropic diffusion

This paper provides the derivation of speckle reducing anisotropic diffusion (SRAD), a diffusion method tailored to ultrasonic and radar imaging applications. SRAD is the edge-sensitive diffusion for speckled images, in the same way that conventional anisotropic diffusion is the edge-sensitive diffusion for images corrupted with additive noise. We first show that the Lee and Frost filters can be cast as partial differential equations, and then we derive SRAD by allowing edge-sensitive anisotropic diffusion within this context. Just as the Lee (1980, 1981, 1986) and Frost (1982) filters utilize the coefficient of variation in adaptive filtering, SRAD exploits the instantaneous coefficient of variation, which is shown to be a function of the local gradient magnitude and Laplacian operators. We validate the new algorithm using both synthetic and real linear scan ultrasonic imagery of the carotid artery. We also demonstrate the algorithm performance with real SAR data. The performance measures obtained by means of computer simulation of carotid artery images are compared with three existing speckle reduction schemes. In the presence of speckle noise, speckle reducing anisotropic diffusion excels over the traditional speckle removal filters and over the conventional anisotropic diffusion method in terms of mean preservation, variance reduction, and edge localization.