Reduction of speckle noise ultrasound images based on TV regularization and modified bayes shrink techniques

Abstract

A challenge for the researchers in medical ultrasound images is speckle noise reduction. In our work, we introduced a new method which reduces speckle noise in ultrasound images. Our method is based on TV regularization and modified bayes shrink. First, TV regularization is performed on the ultrasound image. Then, we perform a discrete wavelet transform on the coefficients obtained from total variation. Some subbands involving an approximation subband and detail subbands are revealed in output. Afterward, modified bayes shrink and soft thresholding are performed on the coefficients of the detail subbands whereas keeping the coefficients of the approximation fixed. Finally, invert the wavelet transform to retrieve the image. The performance of the algorithm has been tested using quantitative measures on synthetic and real ultrasound images. Experiments show that the proposed method does remove speckle noise significantly.