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Anisotropic diffusion filtering for ultrasound speckle reduction

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Abstract

Speckle noise has long been known as a limiting factor for the quality of an ultrasound B-mode image. In this study, anisotropic diffusion filtering is proposed as an effective method for ultrasound speckle reduction. This article provides a brief description of anisotropic diffusion filtering proposed by Perona and Malik, and compares its speckle filtering effects with other filtering methods including median, moving average, and frequency domain Gaussian low-pass. In this study, multiple filters are implemented in Matlab. For each filter, three different types of noisy images with speckle noise are tested. The results show that anisotropic filter can reduce the noise more effectively and meanwhile preserve the boundaries of the objects. In addition, this filter has more controllable filtering parameters and is independent on the information of the noise.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, 77054, USA

    FaDa Guan, ShuaiPing Ge & LiNa Zhao

  2. Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, 210016, China

    FaDa Guan

  3. Roche Molecular Diagnostics, Pleasanton, CA, 94588, USA

    Phuc Ton

  4. The Fourth Military Medical University, Xijing Hospital, Xi’an, 710032, China

    LiNa Zhao

Authors
  1. FaDa Guan
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  2. Phuc Ton
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  3. ShuaiPing Ge
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  4. LiNa Zhao
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Correspondence to FaDa Guan.

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Guan, F., Ton, P., Ge, S. et al. Anisotropic diffusion filtering for ultrasound speckle reduction. Sci. China Technol. Sci. 57, 607–614 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-014-5483-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-014-5483-7

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