Speckle reduction of ultrasound images based on Rayleigh-trimmed anisotropic diffusion filter

A novel method is proposed to reduce speckle in ultrasound images. Based on the assumption of Rayleigh distribution of speckle, a Rayleigh-trimmed filter is first proposed to estimate the relative standard deviations of local signals and the results are used to determine the parameter that controls an alpha-trimmed mean filter for suppressing the primary noise. Then the anisotropic diffusion is subsequently applied to further reduce noise while enhancing features and structures in the original image. We also extend the proposed method to three-dimensional space by introducing time as one additional dimension. The proposed method effectively utilizes the statistical characteristics of speckle and the two-step despeckling algorithm reduces speckle significantly while retaining important features. The effectiveness of the proposed method is well demonstrated by experiments on both simulated and real ultrasound images.

► Estimate relative ultrasound signals based on Rayleigh distribution of speckle. ► Use relative signals to control an alpha-trimmed mean filter for mainly denoising. ► Perform a corresponding anisotropic diffusion for robustness. ► Extend the proposed method to ultrasound sequences.