Simultaneous speckle reduction of echocardiography frame sequence using PCA

By development of ultrasound technology, ultrasonic imaging has become a frequently used diagnostic tool. The main benefit for this system is real-time imaging and being safe compared to other methods of imaging like Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). A challenging issue for ultrasonic imaging is low quality due to naturally inherited speckle noise. In this paper, we have proposed an accurate despeckling method which uses temporal information of echocardiography frames instead of spatial characteristics to reduce speckle in each frame. Data matrix is formed by placing Intensity Variation Time Curves (IVTC) as columns and change in the basis of information is done by Principal Component Analysis (PCA). This method is faster than other reported methods and also does not have the deficiency of image blurring contrary to most other techniques. Results for this technique are evaluated both quantitatively, using evaluation criteria and qualitatively from the viewpoint of an expert.