Decompression and speckle detection for ultrasound images using the homodyned k-distribution

The ultrasound envelope intensity distribution can be used for speckle detection and for measuring the distance between images by speckle decorrelation. However, this intensity signal is rarely available. Many researchers work with B-scan data which has been scan-converted and subject to nonlinear mappings to compress the dynamic range. This paper presents an approximate algorithm for recovering the intensity signal from B-scan data. It is then used as the basis of a speckle detector using the statistics of a homodyned k-distribution.

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