Quantitative measures of boundary and contrast enhancement in speckle reduction in ultrasonic B-mode images using spatial bessel filters

The spatial Bessel filters are studied for their ability to reduce ultrasonic speckle and enhance the boundaries of regions of interest (ROI) in medical B-mode images. Using the concept of the heterogeneity index, a new parameter is defined to provide a quantitative measure of the edge visibility. It is hypothesized that this edge visibility parameter will be almost equal to unity if the ROI does not contain a boundary and greater than unity when the ROI contains a boundary. Analyses of 2 computer-synthesized images containing speckle and B-mode images of tissue-mimicking phantoms were carried out. The improvement in contrast and enhancement in edge visibility were estimated. In addition, parametric images containing a map of the edge visibility were created that showed clear boundaries. The quantitative measures strongly support the visual perception of contrast and enhanced edge visibility provided by the spatial Bessel filters. Results demonstrate the potential use of Bessel spatial filters in providing speckle reduction along with the ability to enhance the boundaries of regions of interest in B-mode images.

[1]  Alexandre Bernardino,et al.  Gabor Parameter Selection for Local Feature Detection , 2005, IbPRIA.

[2]  Joni-Kristian Kämäräinen,et al.  Invariance properties of Gabor filter-based features-overview and applications , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Image Processing.

[3]  R. F. Wagner,et al.  Statistics of Speckle in Ultrasound B-Scans , 1983, IEEE Transactions on Sonics and Ultrasonics.

[4]  Pierfrancesco Lombardo,et al.  Simultaneous mean and texture edge detection in SAR clutter , 1996 .

[5]  A. Lopes,et al.  A statistical and geometrical edge detector for SAR images , 1988 .

[6]  E. Costa,et al.  Ultrasound speckle reduction using modified gabor filters , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control.

[7]  T. Loupas,et al.  An adaptive weighted median filter for speckle suppression in medical ultrasonic images , 1989 .

[8]  Henry Horng-Shing Lu,et al.  A textural approach based on Gabor functions for texture edge detection in ultrasound images. , 2001, Ultrasound in medicine & biology.

[9]  P.M. Shankar,et al.  A compound scattering pdf for the ultrasonic echo envelope and its relationship to K and Nakagami distributions , 2003, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control.

[10]  Susan M. Schultz,et al.  Computer‐Based Margin Analysis of Breast Sonography for Differentiating Malignant and Benign Masses , 2004, Journal of ultrasound in medicine : official journal of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine.

[11]  J. M. Hans du Buf,et al.  Gabor phase in texture discrimination , 1990, Signal Process..

[12]  C. Oliver,et al.  Optimum edge detection in SAR , 1996 .

[13]  P. Mohana Shankar,et al.  Contrast enhancement and phase-sensitive boundary detection in ultrasonic speckle using Bessel spatial filters , 2009, IET Image Process..

[14]  P. Shankar.  A general statistical model for ultrasonic backscattering from tissues , 2000 .

[15]  A. Tannenbaum,et al.  Despeckling of medical ultrasound images , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control.