Strain Compounding in Ultrasonic Imaging

• Main Authors: Chi-lin Wu, 吳積霖
• Other Authors: Pai-chi Li
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2001
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/16482152695662483113

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 電機工程學研究所 === 89 === “ Image Compounding ” is applied to reduce speckle noise in medical ultrasonic imaging. Speckle noise is reduced by incoherently averaging several images of the same image object with different speckle appearance. By reducing the speckle noise, contrast resolution is also improved. All compounding techniques reduce speckle noise at the price of spatial resolution. In this thesis, we propose a new method called strain compounding, which reduces speckle noise with its degradation in spatial resolution. Strain compounding incoherently averages images of the same object under different strain conditions. Since scatterer distribution changes as the applied strain changes, different speckle images of the same object can be acquired for compounding. Computer simulations were performed to investigate efficiency and the tradeoff between speckle noise reduction and loss in spatial resolution. Experiments on both phantom and human imaging were also conducted. It is concluded that Strain Compounding provides a better tradeoff between speckle noise reduction and spatial resolution degradation from conventional compounding techniques. Hence the technique provides a new option for speckle noise reduction.