Abstract

Due to the emergence of microelectronics, ultrasound diagnostic machine can now be manufactured at low cost. The affordability of low cost ultrasound diagnostic machine is of utter importance in allowing wider exposure of ultrasound technology to the general public. Nonetheless, in comparison with international standard requirements, the quality of images from low cost ultrasound machine is still lacking. Furthermore, the evaluation of the quality is subjective and the process is tedious. In this paper, an enhanced processing of ultrasound images using de-speckle diffusion method is proposed and the result is evaluated quantitatively on aspects such as vertical and horizontal distance accuracy, axial and lateral resolution, near field distance, penetration depth and high scatter accuracy. It comprises of the directions north, south, east and west, and the average is taken into calculation by utilizing the instantaneous coefficient of variation (ICOV) method. Algorithms are verified according to its performance in speckle reduction and edge preservation based on root mean square error (RMSE), signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR). The result indicates that de-speckle diffusion is more robust compared to adaptive speckle reduction method. The results obtained proved that the proposed technique could greatly improve the low cost ultrasound image quality.

Key words: Speckle, reduction, ultrasound, images, diffusion, filtering, image processing.