Enhanced Wiener filter for desplecking ultra-sound images

In this paper, a new technique for speckle noise reduction in ultra-sound images is presented. The proposed technique adds to the classical Wiener filter the possibility of taking into account, in the restoration process, the spatial correlation between image pixels. In particular, the technique is able to locally adapt the noise filtering intensity in order to combine good edges and details preservation with effective noise reduction. The method is characterized by low memory requirements and computational burden, allowing quasi real time applications. Results on a realistic simulated dataset are reported, together with a comparison with other largely adopted filtering techniques, allowing a quantitatively evaluation of the proposed approach.