McIlhagga edge detector-based anisotropic diffusion for speckle reduction of ultrasound images

A new speckle reduction method for ultrasound images is proposed based on the McIlhagga edge detector. The edge detector in the traditional anisotropic diffusion was replaced by the McIlhagga edge detector to suppress the speckle noise in ultrasound images. The numerical solution of the McIlhagga edge detector-based anisotropic diffusion (MAD) is derived. Both synthetic and real ultrasound images are used to evaluate the MAD method. The performance of the MAD is compared with six traditional image denoising methods. It is shown that the MAD method is superior to the traditional methods in both noise reduction and detail preservation.