Implementation of Cost Efficient Image Enhancement Technique Reduce Speckle in Ultrasound Images

Abstract

Speckle is a granular multiplicative noise that reduces the resolution and contrast of the image there by degrading the diagnostic accuracy of the Ultrasound image. Speckle reduction technique has to be followed to enhance the quality of ultrasound image [3].Speckle noise occurs in all coherent imaging systems, such as ultrasound images. The speckle noise in ultrasound images is often considered as undesirable and has a negative impact on clinical practitioners for diagnosis. Because of the signal-dependent nature of the speckle intensity, speckle noise in ultrasound imaging requires specific handling. So, any ultrasound speckle de-noising method must be designed in such a way that the speckle noise be suppressed without smearing the edges. In other words, any speckle de-noising method must preserve both the edges and structural details of the image and its quality [8].Digital image enhancement techniques are to improving the visual quality of images. Main objective of image enhancement is to process an image so that result is more suitable than original image for specific application. This paper presents real time hardware image enhancement techniques using field programmable gate array (FPGA) [10].It presents architecture for filters pixel by pixel and regions filters for image processing using Xilinx System Generator (XSG). This architecture offer an alternative through a graphical user interface that combines MATLAB, Simulink and XSG and explore important aspects concerned to hardware implementation.