Compensation of log-compressed images for 3-D ultrasound

In this study, a Bayesian approach was used for 3-D reconstruction in the presence of multiplicative noise and nonlinear compression of the ultrasound (US) data. Ultrasound images are often considered as being corrupted by multiplicative noise (speckle). Several statistical models have been developed to represent the US data. However, commercial US equipment performs a nonlinear image compression that reduces the dynamic range of the US signal for visualization purposes. This operation changes the distribution of the image pixels, preventing a straightforward application of the models. In this paper, the nonlinear compression is explicitly modeled and considered in the reconstruction process, where the speckle noise present in the radio frequency (RF) US data is modeled with a Rayleigh distribution. The results obtained by considering the compression of the US data are then compared with those obtained assuming no compression. It is shown that the estimation performed using the nonlinear log-compression model leads to better results than those obtained with the Rayleigh reconstruction method. The proposed algorithm is tested with synthetic and real data and the results are discussed. The results have shown an improvement in the reconstruction results when the compression operation is included in the image formation model, leading to sharper images with enhanced anatomical details.