Ultrasound speckle reduction based on fractional order differentiation

Purpose Ultrasound images show a granular pattern of noise known as speckle that diminishes their quality and results in difficulties in diagnosis. To preserve edges and features, this paper proposes a fractional differentiation-based image operator to reduce speckle in ultrasound. Methods An image de-noising model based on fractional partial differential equations with balance relation between k (gradient modulus threshold that controls the conduction) and v (the order of fractional differentiation) was constructed by the effective combination of fractional calculus theory and a partial differential equation, and the numerical algorithm of it was achieved using a fractional differential mask operator. Results The proposed algorithm has better speckle reduction and structure preservation than the three existing methods [P-M model, the speckle reducing anisotropic diffusion (SRAD) technique, and the detail preserving anisotropic diffusion (DPAD) technique]. And it is significantly faster than bilateral filtering (BF) in producing virtually the same experimental results. Conclusions Ultrasound phantom testing and in vivo imaging show that the proposed method can improve the quality of an ultrasound image in terms of tissue SNR, CNR, and FOM values.