A Comparison of Speckle Reduction Techniques in Medical Ultrasound Imaging

Abstract

Speckle noise is a multiplicative noise that degrades the visual evaluation in ultrasound imaging. In addition, it limits the efficient application of intelligent image processing algorithms, such as segmentation techniques. Thus, speckle noise reduction is considered an essential pre-processing step. The objective of this paper is to carry out a comparative evaluation of speckle filtering techniques, based on two image quality evaluation metrics, the Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), and the Structural SIMilarity (SSIM) index, and visual evaluation.