Echocardiographic Image Analysis Based on the Evaluation of first Order Speckle Statistics

Basic theoretical considerations on the statistical properties of the speckle phenomenon indicate that a conventional quantization (intervals of uniform width) of the received and envelope detected RF — signal is not adequate. We therefore propose a quantization scheme which is based on the application of quantization intervals producing always the same confidence level (adaptive quantization). The advantages are: We furthermore succeeded in demonstrating, that the result of the adaptive quantization method is equivalent to the effect of a logarithmic transformation of the envelope detected signal followed by an equidistant quantization of the transformed signal. Application of this method to echocardiographic images confirms, that the adaptive quantization quantitatively improves the visual delineation of contrast enhanced areas.