The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Apr. 15, 1997
Filed:
Mar. 11, 1996
Aiman A Abdel-Malek, Schenectady, NY (US);
Kenneth W Rigby, Clifton Park, NY (US);
General Electric Company, Schenectady, NY (US);
Abstract
Signal-dependent noise in a coherent imaging system signal, such as in medical ultrasound imaging, is reduced by filtering speckle noise using nonlinear adaptive thresholding of received echo wavelet transform coefficients, thereby enhancing the resultant image by improving the signal-to-noise ratio. The method includes the steps of dividing the imaging system signal into a number of subinterval signals of equal length; transforming each subinterval signal using discrete wavelet transformation to provide wavelet transform coefficients for each of a plurality of wavelet scales having different levels of resolution ranging from a finest wavelet scale to a coarsest wavelet scale: deleting all of the wavelet transform coefficients representing the finest wavelet scale: for each wavelet scale other than the finest wavelet scale, identifying for each subinterval signal which of the wavelet transform coefficients are related to noise and which are related to a true signal through the use of adaptive nonlinear thresholding; selecting those wavelet transform coefficients which are identified as being related to a true signal; and setting to zero those wavelet coefficients which are identified as being related to noise: inverse transforming the modified wavelet transform coefficients using an inverse discrete wavelet transformation to provide an enhanced true signal with reduced noise.