What is Backscattering

The B-mode ultrasound images are corrupted due to the presence of speckle noise. Hence, the speckle removal in the ultrasound images is essential for proper clinical examination and quantitative assessments. The speckle pattern varies with several imaging parameters as well as the anatomical structure in the image. It is hard to avoid speckle by performing averaging and low noise system designs. An excessive speckle reduction diminishes the visibility of small anatomical structures and thereby makes the image understanding complicated. This chapter is intended to encapsulate various techniques for reducing speckle in medical ultrasound images and improving the image quality for visual inspection and/or computer-assisted diagnosis of ultrasound images. In addition, the chapter surveys the papers published between 2015 and 2018 to highlight the latest trends in the despeckling of ultrasound images. The chapter also presents the performance comparison of a few popular algorithms to despeckle medical ultrasound images.