Speckle Noise Estimation in Ultrassound images

Hello,

Is there any way to estimate the noise (or get a noise value) of an image, concerning speckle noise?

Thank you

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

Can you get images from uniform/homgenous soilds/gels with different densities/reflectivities? If so you could get a distribution of noise and see how it varies with material density.

See papers on speckle analysis and removal in VisionBib:

• 20.12 Medical Applications -- Ultrasound, Ultrasonic
• 20.12.1 Photoacoustic Tomography, Ultrasonic, Generation
• 20.12.2 Freehand Ultrasound, Ultrasonic, Generation
• 20.12.3 Ultrasound, Ultrasonic, Speckle Removal, Restoration, Analysis
• 20.12.4 Ultrasound, Ultrasonic, Image Segmentation, Contour Extraction, Contour Motion

[João Mendes]

Thank you for your answer. I have several medical ultrasound images and was just wondering if there was a way of getting a value (or set of values) that described the noise level present in the image.

I will explore the papers you referenced! Thank you!

[Image Analyst]

If you just have a pixel, and no other knowledge, you don't know how much of that pixel's value is due to the "true" signal, and how much is due to noise. That's where having what should be a uniform image would help you. You can't just do what many people do and that is to take the standard deviation of the gray levels. The std dev is not noise since it would have a value even with a noise-free image. The papers should outline approaches for how to estimate the noise.