Abstract—Ultrasound images contain speckle noise which degrades the quality of the images. Eliminating such noise is an important preprocessing task. This paper describes and analyses an algorithm for cleaning speckle noise in ultrasound medical images. Mathematical Morphological operations are used in this algorithm. This algorithm is based on Morphological Image Cleaning algorithm (MIC) designed by Richard Alan Peters II. The algorithm uses a different technique for reconstructing the features that are lost while removing the noise. For morphological operations it also uses arbitrary structuring elements suitable for the ultrasound images which have speckle noise.

Index Terms—bottom hat, morphology, reconstruction, speckle, structuring element, top hat

T.Ratha Jeyalakshmi is a Research scholar at Mother Teresa University, Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, India. (radha_jeyalakshmi@yahoo.com)
Dr.K.Ramar is Professor and Head in Department of Computer Science and Engineering, National Engineering College, Kovilpatti, Tamil Nadu, India. (kramar_nec@rediffmail.com).

Cite: T.Ratha Jeyalakshmi and K.Ramar, "A Modified Method for Speckle Noise Removal in Ultrasound Medical Images," International Journal of Computer and Electrical Engineering vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 54-58, 2010.