Ultrasound has been used in the medical field in humans since the late 1940’s. One of its common uses is for obtaining images of different regions of a person’s body. The resulting images, however, are riddled with system dependent imperfections called speckle.
Speckle is multiplicative noise that distorts an image and looks very similar to television static placed on top of an image. In ultrasound images, defects such as a lesion or a tumor may be small. Consequently, the effects of speckle may reduce the visibility of these small targets.
The motivation of this study is to reduce speckle to improve the contrast while attempting to preserve key features in the image. The significance here lies in the improvement of diagnostic ultrasound resulting in earlier detection of cancer, easier identification of small but threatening lesions, etc.