Fractional subpixel diffusion and fuzzy logic approach for ultrasound speckle reduction

Speckle is the dominant source of noise in ultrasound imaging and is a kind of multiplicative noise. It is difficult to design a filter to remove speckle effectively. In this paper, a novel fuzzy subpixel fractional partial difference (FSFPD) for ultrasound speckle reduction is proposed. Euler-Lagrange equation acts as an increasing function of the fractional derivative's absolute value of the image intensity function. The fractional order partial difference is computed in the frequency and fuzzy domain with subpixel precision. We test the proposed method on both synthetic and real breast ultrasound (BUS) images. The comparisons of the experimental results show that the proposed method can preserve edges and structural details of ultrasound images well while removing speckle noise. In addition, the filtered images are assessed and evaluated by radiologists using double blind method. The results demonstrate that the discrimination rate of breast cancers has been highly improved after employing the proposed method.     

Ultrasound speckle reduction by a SUSAN-controlled anisotropic diffusion method

An ultrasound speckle reduction method is proposed in this paper. The filter, which enhances the power of anisotropic diffusion with the Smallest Univalue Segment Assimilating Nucleus (SUSAN) edge detector, is referred to as the SUSAN-controlled anisotropic diffusion (SUSAN_AD). The SUSAN edge detector finds image features by using local information from a pseudo-global perspective. Thanks to the noise insensitivity and structure preservation properties of SUSAN, a better control can be provided to the subsequent diffusion process. To enhance the adaptability of the SUSAN_AD, the parameters of the SUSAN edge detector are calculated based on the statistics of a fully formed speckle (FFS) region. Different FFS estimation schemes are proposed for envelope-detected speckle images and log-compressed ultrasonic images. Adaptive diffusion threshold estimation and automatic diffusion termination criterion are employed to enhance the robustness of the method. Both synthetic and real ultrasound images are used to evaluate the proposed method. The performance of the SUSAN_AD is compared with four other existing speckle reduction methods. It is shown that the proposed method is superior to other methods in both noise reduction and detail preservation.     

小波与双边滤波的医学超声图像去噪

目的：医学超声图像中的斑点噪声降低了图像质量并且限制了超声图像自动化诊断技术的发展。针对斑点噪声问题,提出了一种新型的基于小波和双边滤波的去噪算法。方法：首先,根据医学超声图像在小波域内的统计特性,在通用小波阈值函数的基础之上,改进了小波阈值函数。其次,将无噪信号的小波系数和斑点噪声的小波系数分别建模为广义拉普拉斯分布模型和高斯分布模型,利用贝叶斯最大后验估计方法得到了新型的小波收缩算法,利用小波阈值法对小波域内的高频信号分量进行去噪。最后,对小波域内的低频信号分量进行双边滤波处理,然后利用小波逆变换便得到去噪后的图像。结果：在仿真实验中,通过与其它7种去噪算法作对比,观察峰值信噪比(PSNR)等图像质量评价指标,结果表明本文算法的去噪效果优于其他相关算法。临床超声图像的实验结果进一步验证了本文算法的去噪性能。结论：本文提出了一种新型的去噪算法,实验表明本文算法能够很好地抑制斑点噪声,并且能保留图像病灶边缘等细节。     

一种基于小波域隐马尔可夫模型的SAR相干斑抑制算法

相干斑噪声是SAR图像的固有特点。对相干斑抑制的要求是在平滑噪声的同时，尽量保持原始图像的结构信息。现有的许多相干斑抑制方法各有优点和不足，没有普遍的适用性。基于图像在小波域的隐马尔可夫模型(HMMs)结构，结合SAR图像中相干斑噪声的统计特性，本文提出了一种新的小波域相干斑抑制方法。仿真及实测数据处理结果表明，该方法在有效抑制相干斑的同时，更好地保持了边缘结构。与小波域软阈值去噪方法和Lee滤波器相比较，该方法在噪声平滑及边缘保持上都取得了较大的改进，并得到了较好的视觉效果。     

一种改进的基于非局部均值的极化SAR相干斑抑制算法

贝叶斯形式的非局部均值模型在极化SAR图像相干斑抑制中有良好的应用,在实现抑制相干斑的同时较地保持了边缘细节和点目标。本文通过分析SAR图像多视数据的空间统计分布,结合贝叶斯形式的非局部均值模型,得出了在该模型下多视与单视SAR图像中像素间相似性度量函数一致性的结论,并对该相似性度量函数进行了修正,使之满足对称性;最后针对算法全局使用一个固定滤波参数影响滤波效果的问题,提出了一种根据像素间相似程度自适应选取滤波参数的方法。实验结果验证了本文算法的有效性。     

Smoothing of ultrasound images using a new selective average filter

Ultrasound images are strongly affected by speckle noise making visual and computational analysis of the structures more difficult. Usually, the interference caused by this kind of noise reduces the efficiency of extraction and interpretation of the structural features of interest. In order to overcome this problem, a new method of selective smoothing based on average filtering and the radiation intensity of the image pixels is proposed. The main idea of this new method is to identify the pixels belonging to the borders of the structures of interest in the image, and then apply a reduced smoothing to these pixels, whilst applying more intense smoothing to the remaining pixels. Experimental tests were conducted using synthetic ultrasound images with speckle noisy added and real ultrasound images from the female pelvic cavity. The new smoothing method is able to perform selective smoothing in the input images, enhancing the transitions between the different structures presented. The results achieved are promising, as the evaluation analysis performed shows that the developed method is more efficient in removing speckle noise from the ultrasound images compared to other current methods. This improvement is because it is able to adapt the filtering process according to the image contents, thus avoiding the loss of any relevant structural features in the input images.     

改进的基于非局部均值的极化SAR相干斑抑制

贝叶斯形式的非局部均值模型在极化SAR图像相干斑抑制中有良好的应用,在实现抑制相干斑的同时较好地保持了边缘细节和点目标.通过分析合成孔径雷达(SAR)图像多视数据的空间统计分布,结合贝叶斯形式的非局部均值模型,得出在该模型下多视与单视SAR图像中像素间相似性度量函数一致性的结论,并对该相似性度量函数进行了修正,使之满足对称性;最后针对算法全局使用一个固定滤波参数影响滤波效果的问题,提出一种根据像素间相似程度自适应选取滤波参数的方法.实验结果验证了本文算法的有效性.     

基于血液斑点噪声抑制和T-Snake模型的血管内超声图像边缘提取

血管内超声(IVUS)图像冠状动脉血管壁内、外膜的边缘提取对冠状动脉疾病的诊断和治疗有着重要意义。为了更好地抑制血管内超声图像的血液斑点噪声,首先采用一种时/空滤波方法对IVUS图像进行降噪预处理,以抑制其严重的血液斑点噪声;然后,为了更好地提取血管边缘,提出了一种改进的自适应形变模型,并基于该改进的自适应形变模型(T-Snake模型)给出了一种IVUS图像冠状动脉血管壁内、外膜边缘的提取方法。实验结果表明,该边缘提取方法有着较高的准确性和可靠性,对IVUS序列图像处理的可重复性和鲁棒性较好;也表明了改进的T-Snake模型的可实现性,以及IVUS图像血液斑点噪声抑制方法的有效性。     

Visual enhancement of digital ultrasound images using multiscale wavelet domain

Ultrasonography has been considered as one of the most powerful techniques for imaging organs and soft tissue structures in the human body. The main disadvantage of medical ultrasonography is the poor quality of images, which are affected by multiplicative speckle noise. In this paper, we present a novel method for despeckling medical ultrasound images. The primary goal of speckle reduction is to remove the speckle without losing much detail contained in an image. To achieve this goal, we make use of the wavelet transform and apply multi-resolution analysis to localize an image into different frequency components or useful subbands and then effectively reduce the speckle in the subbands according to the local statistics within the bands. The main advantage of the wavelet transform is that the image fidelity after reconstruction is visually lossless. The objective of the paper is to investigate the proper selection of wavelet filters and thresholding schemes which yields optimal visual enhancement of ultrasound images, in particular. We employ the wavelet shrinkage denoising techniques with different wavelet bases and decomposition levels on the individual subbands to achieve the best acceptable speckle reduction while maintaining the fidelity of the image and also examine the effects of different thresholding techniques as well as shrinkage rules for denoising ultrasound images. The proposed method consists of the log transformed original ultrasound image being subjected to wavelet transform, which is then denoised by a thresholding technique using a shrinkage rule. Experimental results show that the subband decomposition of ultrasound images, using Bior6.8 and level 3 with soft thresholding based on Bayes shrinkage rule, performs better than other techniques. The performance is measured in terms of Variance, Mean Square Error (MSE), Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR), Peak SNR (PSNR) and Correlation Coefficient (CC). The results of wavelet shrinkage techniques are compared with common speckle filters. We observe that the proposed method achieves better visual enhancement of ultrasound images which would lead to more accurate image analysis by the medical experts.     

Aggressive region growing for speckle reduction in ultrasound images

Speckle appears in all conventional medical B-mode ultrasonic images and can be an undesirable property since it may mask small but diagnostically significant features. In this paper, an adaptive filtering algorithm is proposed for speckle reduction. It selects a filtering region size using an appropriately estimated homogeneity value for region growth. Homogeneous regions are processed with an arithmetic mean filter. Edge pixels are filtered using a nonlinear median filter. The performance of the proposed technique is compared to two other methods––the adaptive weighted median filter and the homogeneous region growing mean filter. Results of processed images show that the method proposed reduces speckle noise and preserves edge details effectively.     

基于对数压缩的超声各向异性扩散去噪方法

针对当前超声图像去噪算法很难同时做到降噪和边缘保持的情况,在进行各向异性扩散模型研究的基础上,提出基于对数压缩的改进各向异性扩散算法（LCAD）去除超声散斑噪声。算法将图像对数压缩后进行噪声分布模型估计,然后构造基于广义伽马分布的扩散系数,在扩散过程中达到降噪和边缘保持效果。     

基于形态Haar小波的SAR图像斑点噪声抑制方法

针对现有相干斑抑制算法不能在去除斑点噪声和保持图像边缘、细节信息之间做到很好的折中,提出了一种新的基于形态Haar小波变换的合成孔径雷达(SAR)图像斑点噪声抑制方法。该方法首先对SAR图像进行二维形态Haar小波分解,图像的边缘、细节和纹理信息在低频子带中得到了更好的保留,噪声主要分布在高频子带;然后,根据各高频子带噪声的特点,分别对高频子带进行均值和中值滤波达到去除斑点噪声的目的;最后,再对低频子带和处理后的高频子带进行形态Haar小波精确重构得到去斑图像。实验证明:该算法不仅大大改善了原始SAR图像的画面质量,同时很好地保持了原始SAR图像的纹理特性和细节信息;该算法去斑性能指标总体优于传统的Lee滤波、Frost滤波、Kuan滤波和小波软阈值法。     

Spatially adaptive thresholding in wavelet domain for despeckling of ultrasound images

Ultrasound imaging is widely used for diagnostic purposes among the clinicians. A major problem concerning the ultrasound images is their inherent corruption by the multiplicative speckle noise that hampers the quality of the diagnosis, and reduces the efficiency of the algorithms for automatic image processing. In this paper, we propose a new spatially adaptive wavelet-based method in order to reduce the speckle noise from ultrasound images. A spatially adaptive threshold is introduced for denoising the coefficients of log-transformed ultrasound images. The threshold is obtained from a Bayesian maximum a posteriori estimator that is developed using a symmetric normal inverse Gaussian probability density function (PDF) as a prior for modelling the coefficients of the log-transformed reflectivity. A simple and fast method is provided to estimate the parameters of the prior PDF from the neighbouring coefficients. Extensive simulations are carried out using synthetically speckled and ultrasound images. It is shown that the proposed method outperforms several existing techniques in terms of the signal-to-noise ratio, edge preservation index and structural similarity index and visual quality, and in addition, is able to maintain the diagnostically significant details of ultrasound images.     

A statistical and Wiener filtering algorithm based on the curvelet transform for SAR images

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images contain many kinds of noise. Speckle noise is multiplicative noise generated by the coherent imaging processes involved in SAR images and brings a great hindrance to the interpretation and application of SAR images, so it is considered the first major kind of noise in SAR images. SAR images also contain other incoherent additive noises generated by other factors, such as Gaussian noise, which are all considered the second major kind of noise. In order to reduce the impact of noise as much as possible, after an in-depth study of SAR imaging and noise-generating mechanism, curvelet transform principle, and Wiener filtering characteristic, a novel filtering method, here called the statistical and Wiener based on curvelet transform (SWCT) method is proposed. The SWCT algorithm processes two different kinds noise based on their properties. Specifically, it establishes a two-tiered filtering framework. For the first kind of noise, the algorithm uses the curvelet transform to decompose the SAR image and uses the statistical characteristics of the SAR image to generate an adaptive filtering threshold of the coefficients of decomposition to recover the original image. Then it filters every sub-band image at each decomposed scale and performs the inverse curvelet transform. The second kind of noise is directly filtered using the Wiener filter in the SWCT algorithm. Using the two-tiered filtering model and fully exploiting statistical characteristics, the SWCT algorithm not only reduces the amount of coherent speckle noise and incoherent noise effectively but also retains the edges and geometric details of the original SAR image. This is very good for target detection, classification, and recognition. Qualitative and quantitative tests were performed using simulated speckle noise, Gaussian noise, and real SAR images. The proposed SWCT algorithm was found to remove noise effectively and the performance of the algorithm was tested and compared to the mean filter, enhanced gamma-MAP (maximum a posterior probability) filter, wavelet transform filter, Wiener filter, and curvelet transform filter. Experiments carried out on real SAR images confirmed that the new method has a good filtering effect and can be used on different SAR images.     

基于小波域隐马尔可夫树模型的超声图象贝叶斯去噪

提出了一种新的医学超声图象去噪方法 .首先 ,原始超声图象经对数变换 ,其乘性散粒噪声变为了加性噪声 ;然后再经小波变换后 ,基于隐马尔可夫树模型 ,应用贝叶斯方法去除加性噪声 ;最后 ,经小波反变换和指数变换恢复去噪后的原始超声图象 .测试结果表明 ,此方法在有效去除噪声的同时 ,能保留原始图象的细节边缘 .针对超声图象还对几种去噪算法作出定性比较 ,并对去噪性能给出定量分析 ,实验结果表明 ,该方法是可行的     

Contour segmentation in 2D ultrasound medical images with particle filtering

Object segmentation in medical images is an actively investigated research area. Segmentation techniques are a valuable tool in medical diagnostics for cancer tumours and cysts, for planning surgery operations and other medical treatment. In this paper, a Monte Carlo algorithm for extracting lesion contours in ultrasound medical images is proposed. An efficient multiple model particle filter for progressive contour growing (tracking) from a starting point is developed, accounting for convex, non-circular forms of delineated contour areas. The driving idea of the proposed particle filter consists in the incorporation of different image intensity inside and outside the contour into the filter likelihood function. The filter employs image intensity gradients as measurements and requires information about four manually selected points: a seed point, a starting point, arbitrarily selected on the contour, and two additional points, bounding the measurement formation area around the contour. The filter performance is studied by segmenting contours from a number of real and simulated ultrasound medical images. Accurate contour segmentation is achieved with the proposed approach in ultrasound images with a high level of speckle noise.     

极化SAR相干斑抑制的非局部加权最小均方误差滤波算法

目的 相干斑的存在严重影响了极化合成孔径雷达(PolSAR)的影像质量.对相干斑的抑制是使用SAR数据的必不可少的预处理程序.提出一种基于非局部加权的线性最小均方误差(LMMSE)滤波器的极化SAR滤波的方法.方法 该方法的主要过程是利用非局部均值的理论来获取LMMSE估计器中像素样本的权重.同时,在样本像素的选取过程中,利用待处理像素的极化散射特性和邻域块的异质性来排除不相似像素以加速算法,同时达到保持点目标和自适应调节块窗口大小的目的.结果 模拟影像和真实影像上进行的实验结果表明,采用这种方法滤波后影像的质量得到明显改善.和传统的LMMSE算法相比,无论是单视的影像还是多视的影像,本文方法去噪结果的等效视数都高出8视以上;峰值信噪比也提升了5.8 dB.同时,去噪后影像分类的总体精度也达到了83％以上,该方法的运行效率也比非局部均值算法有了较大提升.结论 本文方法不仅能够有效抑制相干斑噪声,还能较好地保持边缘和细节信息以及极化散射特性.这将会为后续高效利用SAR数据提供保障.     

一种新型的空域SAR图像相干斑抑制方法

为了有效抑制SAR强度图像中的相干斑噪声,提出一种改进Sigma滤波并结合Gamma MAP滤波的空域相干斑抑制方法。首先利用阈值判断法判断并保留强点目标,然后结合SAR图像分布模型和MMSE准则判断Sigma区间,其中可以根据图像局部统计特性自适应调整窗口尺寸,最后选择Sigma区间内像素进行Gamma MAP滤波。实验结果表明:对于星载和机载SAR图像,在相干斑噪声抑制和边缘纹理细节信息保持方面,该方法较其他常用的空域相干斑抑制方法具有明显的优越性,能极大地提高SAR图像判读和目标识别能力。     

引入欧氏距离的各向异性扩散相干斑抑制

目的 相干斑噪声严重影响SAR影像解译。抑制相干斑同时,获取较好的边缘保持效果始终是相干斑抑制的重点。针对该问题,提出一种引入欧氏距离的各向异性扩散（EDAD）相干斑抑制方法。方法 EDAD算法以P-M模型与SRAD算法为基础,利用邻近像素间区域欧氏距离代替原有边缘检测算子,自适应区分同质区与异质区,有效构造各向异性扩散系数,完成相干斑抑制。结果 运用EDAD算法与现存各向异性扩散算法对截取的两景TanDEM-X影像进行试验研究并比较各类算法的评估参数。EDAD算法的等效视数分别为3.996与5.859,均高于其他算法,体现优越的相干斑抑制能力;EDAD算法相干斑抑制前后比值影像的均值分别为0.999与1.001,方差分别为0.270与0.269,较其他算法均更接近理想值1与0.273,展现更优边缘保持与相干斑抑制能力。结论 本文算法可有效提高边缘检测能力,获取更优相干斑抑制效果。经验证,对分布较散的弱相干斑区域与分布较集中的强相干斑区域均有较好适用性。     

一种新的SAR图像快速自适应去斑算法

针对SAR图像斑点噪声的滤除,提出了一种新的基于Countourlet变换的快速自适应性噪声去除方法。鉴于SAR图像的Countourlet系数主要取决于斑点噪声和信号腐化,且呈现出很强的非高斯分布特性,据此,首先建立了SAR图像Countourlet系数的高斯混合分布解析模型;然后用每个系数的邻域系数通过估计其去斑收缩因子来实现系数的自适应收缩;最后对Lee滤波、Foster滤波、Gamma滤波、小波、Curvelet和Contourlet变换的去斑性能进行了比较分析。实验结果表明,该新方法在保留细节和锐化图像的同时,能强有力地抑制斑点噪声。