Smoothing of ultrasound images using a new selective average filter

Autor: Christos E. Constantinou, João Manuel R. S. Tavares, Alex F. de Araujo
Přispěvatelé: Faculdade de Engenharia
Rok vydání: 2016
Předmět:
Computer science
Image quality
ComputingMethodologies_IMAGEPROCESSINGANDCOMPUTERVISION
Image processing
Engineering and technology
02 engineering and technology
Edge-preserving smoothing
Convolution
Speckle pattern
Artificial Intelligence
Ciências da engenharia e tecnologias
0202 electrical engineering
electronic engineering
information engineering
Computer vision
Radiant intensity
Pixel
business.industry
General Engineering
020206 networking & telecommunications
Speckle noise
Filter (signal processing)
Technological sciences
Engineering and technology
Computer Science Applications
Ciências Tecnológicas
Ciências da engenharia e tecnologias
Computer Science::Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
020201 artificial intelligence & image processing
Artificial intelligence
Bilateral filter
business
Smoothing
Zdroj: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal
Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (RCAAP)
instacron:RCAAP
ISSN: 0957-4174
Popis: A new method is proposed to perform selective smoothing of images affected by speckle noise.A new smoothing criterion is defined for the average smoothing filter.The convolution window of the smoothing filter is adjustable.The method is evaluated using real ultrasound medical images based on image quality metrics.The proposed method produced better results than the current methods evaluated. Ultrasound images are strongly affected by speckle noise making visual and computational analysis of the structures more difficult. Usually, the interference caused by this kind of noise reduces the efficiency of extraction and interpretation of the structural features of interest. In order to overcome this problem, a new method of selective smoothing based on average filtering and the radiation intensity of the image pixels is proposed. The main idea of this new method is to identify the pixels belonging to the borders of the structures of interest in the image, and then apply a reduced smoothing to these pixels, whilst applying more intense smoothing to the remaining pixels. Experimental tests were conducted using synthetic ultrasound images with speckle noisy added and real ultrasound images from the female pelvic cavity. The new smoothing method is able to perform selective smoothing in the input images, enhancing the transitions between the different structures presented. The results achieved are promising, as the evaluation analysis performed shows that the developed method is more efficient in removing speckle noise from the ultrasound images compared to other current methods. This improvement is because it is able to adapt the filtering process according to the image contents, thus avoiding the loss of any relevant structural features in the input images.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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