Speckle Noise Reduction Of Ultrasound Images Based On Neighbor Pixels Averaging

Abstract

In this paper, a novel approach for removing the speckle noise in ultrasound images has been proposed. The main problem of ultrasound imaging systems is the presence of speckle noise, which causes the edges and fine details degradation. In this scheme, the proposed method to suppress the speckle noise is neighbor pixels averaging (NPA) filter, which averages based on the only pixels which are in a neighborhood of the window’s pixels mean. The proposed criterion for vicinity is based on a factor determined by the standard deviation (STD) of pixels. It utilizes a uniform weighting factor for neighbor pixels in its own window and replaces the center pixel with this new value. The performance of NPA filter in comparison with other types of despeckling filters through experimental simulations is verified. Several medical ultrasound images were employed and the obtained results clearly show the better performance of proposed approach in speckle noise reduction.