title: Optimum nonlinear signal detection and estimation in the presence of ultrasonic speckle.
abstract: A unified approach to the design of nonlinear filters for speckle suppression in ultrasound B-mode images is presented. The detection of the (lesion) signal is formulated as a binary hypothesis-testing problem. The structure of the optimal decision rules is derived both in the case where the lesion signal is assumed either a constant or random variable. In the case of a constant signal, the maximum likelihood (ML) estimator and the optimal L-estimator are derived. In the case of a random lesion signal, the maximum a posteriori probability estimator of the lesion signal has also been found. Experimental results verify the superiority of the proposed ML-estimator and the L-estimator over the straightforward choice of an arithmetic mean for speckle filtering in simulated tissue mimicking phantom ultrasound B-mode images.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Thessaloniki, Greece.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kotropoulos
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Pitas
mesh_terms: D004867:Equipment Design; D006801:Humans; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D014463:Ultrasonography / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*