Warped anisotropic diffusion of ultrasound image

Ultrasound images contain speckle noise that creates granular pattern which degrades their quality. Typically, the granular noise has a circular pattern that circles the position of the ultrasound probe which acts as it center. As such, anisotropic diffusion filter cannot completely remove the granular noise. In this work, we propose a technique that pre-processes an ultrasound image using warping operation prior to the application of anisotropic diffusion as well as post-processes it via dewarping operation. Based on visual observation and power signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) calculation of the test image, the proposed warped anisotropic diffusion (WAD) technique provides an improve result when compared with the original version of anisotropic diffusion (AD) technique.