A homomorphic non-subsampled contourlet transform based ultrasound image despeckling by novel thresholding function and self-organizing map

The speckle noise leaves an adverse effect on ultrasound images due to which loss of information occurs. Hence this paper proposes a homomorphic Non-Subsampled Contourlet Transform (NSCT) based ultrasound image despeckling technique using a novel thresholding function, bilateral filter, and self-organizing map (SOM). The bilateral filter is utilized over the low-pass NSCT sub-band for speckle component removal and sharp features. To get better noise suppression and edge preservation, a novel thresholding function is proposed and performed over the high-pass NSCT sub-band. In the proposed method, Kohonen’s SOM is implemented as a post-processing step for deblurring purposes. The significance of the proposed scheme is also tested where it was found that using Kohonen’s SOM as post-processing works better than without post-processing. Experimental outcomes were also evaluated on real speckled ultrasound images and synthetic added speckled noisy images. The results are evaluated and compared using visual analysis and performance metrics using with and without reference images. For more critical analysis, intensity profile along a line and experts observation were also evaluated to find the performance analysis of the proposed methodology. From all experimental and comparative evaluations, it was found that the proposed approach gives better outcomes compared to similar and recent methods.