[Ultrasound image de-noising based on nonlinear diffusion of complex wavelet transform].

Ultrasound images are easily corrupted by speckle noise, which limits its further application in medical diagnoses. An image de-noising method combining dual-tree complex wavelet transform (DT-CWT) with nonlinear diffusion is proposed in this paper. Firstly, an image is decomposed by DT-CWT. Then adaptive-contrast-factor diffusion and total variation diffusion are applied to high-frequency component and low-frequency component, respectively. Finally the image is synthesized. The experimental results are given. The comparisons of the image de-noising results are made with those of the image de-noising methods based on the combination of wavelet shrinkage with total variation diffusion, the combination of wavelet/multiwavelet with nonlinear diffusion. It is shown that the proposed image de-noising method based on DT-CWT and nonlinear diffusion can obtain superior results. It can both remove speckle noise and preserve the original edges and textural features more efficiently.