A study of morphological edge enhancement by double structuring element for ultrasound B-mode images [biomedical imaging]

We discuss new adaptive morphological operations using double structuring elements (DSEs) and apply them to boundary enhancement of ultrasound B-mode images with speckle pattern. The DSE is a combination of two different structuring elements. The DSE yields an edge-sharpening effect, changing with the local characteristics of the input image. A general single structuring element does not have the sharpening function. Our method improves contrast around the tissue boundary without speckle emphasis and does not generate overshoot nor undershoot around the boundary. We demonstrate its effectiveness in experiments using breast cancer images.