oa Ultrasound Image Enhancement Using An Adaptive Anisotropic Diffusion Filter

Ultrasound imaging system is an important imaging modality for the diagnosis of most pathology. However, in certain situations the accuracy of diagnosis can be altered due to the speckle noise that affects these images, which can lead to a misdiagnosis. Ultrasonic speckle is an interference effect caused by the scattering of the ultrasonic beam from microscopic tissues inhomogeneities. To curb this difficulty many despeckling algorithms are being discussed in literature. Several adaptive speckle filters are proposed based on statistics extracted from the local environment of each pixel. These filters smooth speckle adequately, but they do not preserve details efficiently. In this work we aimed to develop an adapted anisotropic diffusion filter based on Perona and Malik method (PM), that can reduce the speckle noise and at the same time preserve the edges. Experimental results were taken from Sheikh Zaid Hospital located in Rabat-Morocco and are considered to illustrate the performance of the proposed technique.