Deep Learning-Based Ultrasound Image Despeckling by Noise Model Estimation

Speckle noise is an inherent artifact appearing in medical images that significantly lowers the quality and accuracy of diagnosis and treatment. Therefore, speckle reduction is considered as an essential step before processing and analyzing the ultrasound images. In this paper, we propose an ultrasound speckle reduction method based on speckle noise model estimation using a deep learning architecture called “speckle noise-based inception convolutional denoising neural network (SNICDNN). Regarding the complicated nature of speckle noise, an inception module is added to the first layer to boost the power of feature extraction. Reconstruction of the despeckled image is performed by introducing a mathematical method based on solving a quadratic equation and applying an image-based inception convolutional denoising autoencoder (IICDAE). The results of various quantitative and qualitative evaluations on real ultrasound images demonstrate that SNICDNN outperforms the state-of-the-art methods for ultrasound despeckling. SNICDNN achieves 0.4579 dB and 0.0100 additional gains on average for PSNR and SSIM, respectively, compared to other methods. Denoising ultrasound based on its noise model estimation is not only a novel approach in comparison to traditional denoising autoencoder models but also due to the fact that it uses mathematical solutions to recover denoised images, SNICDNN shows a greater power in ultrasound despeckling.