Ultrasound image quality evaluation

The objective of this work was to evaluate the image quality of two different ultrasound image scanners before and after de-speckle filtering. The evaluation was made by statistical and texture analysis, as well as by optical perception by two vascular experts on 20 ultrasound images of carotid artery. The de-speckled filters used were based on: (i) local statistics, (ii) homogeneous mask area filters, and (iii) geometric filtering. Results showed that image quality was improved after de-speckle filtering for both scanners.