Speckle Noise Reduction in B-Mode Echocardiographic Images: A comparison

ABSTRACT This paper presents the despeckling applications of 48 filters for B-mode echocardiographic images. The filters are grouped into eight types, namely, local statistics, fuzzy, Fourier, multiscale, nonlinear iterative, total variation, nonlocal mean, and hybrid. The thrust areas of analyses are noise suppression, edge, and structure preservation evaluated in terms of image quality metrics, visual quality assessment, and clinical validation. The comparative analysis reveals that filters based on generalized likelihood ratio, local statistics (mean and variance), detail preserving anisotropic diffusion, fast bilateral, sparse representation based beta process factor analysis, and patch-based locally optimal Wiener and probabilistic nonlocal means stand out among the techniques being considered for comparison.

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