title: Nonlocal Total-Variation-Based Speckle Filtering for Ultrasound Images.
abstract: Ultrasound is one of the most important medical imaging modalities for its real-time and portable imaging advantages. However, the contrast resolution and important details are degraded by the speckle in ultrasound images. Many speckle filtering methods have been developed, but they are suffered from several limitations, difficult to reach a balance between speckle reduction and edge preservation. In this paper, an adaptation of the nonlocal total variation (NLTV) filter is proposed for speckle reduction in ultrasound images. The speckle is modeled via a signal-dependent noise distribution for the log-compressed ultrasound images. Instead of the Euclidian distance, the statistical Pearson distance is introduced in this study for the similarity calculation between image patches via the Bayesian framework. And the Split-Bregman fast algorithm is used to solve the adapted NLTV despeckling functional. Experimental results on synthetic and clinical ultrasound images and comparisons with some classical and recent algorithms are used to demonstrate its improvements in both speckle noise reduction and tissue boundary preservation for ultrasound images.
authors: Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, People's Republic of China.
authors: Tiexiang
authors: T
authors: Wen
authors: Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, People's Republic of China The Shenzhen Key Laboratory for Low-Cost Healthcare, Shenzhen, People's Republic of China jia.gu@siat.ac.cn.
authors: Jia
authors: J
authors: Gu
authors: Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, People's Republic of China.
authors: Ling
authors: L
authors: Li
authors: Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, People's Republic of China University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People's Republic of China.
authors: Wenjian
authors: W
authors: Qin
authors: Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, People's Republic of China The Shenzhen Key Laboratory for Low-Cost Healthcare, Shenzhen, People's Republic of China.
authors: Lei
authors: L
authors: Wang
authors: Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, People's Republic of China.
authors: Yaoqin
authors: Y
authors: Xie
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001499:Bayes Theorem; D003198:Computer Simulation; D006801:Humans; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D059629:Signal-To-Noise Ratio; D014463:Ultrasonography / Q000379:methods*
keywords: Bayesian estimator; nonlocal total variation; speckle reduction; ultrasound image