A Universal Deep Learning Framework for Real-Time Denoising of Ultrasound Images
This work addresses noise reduction in ultrasound images for medical applications, but it is incremental as it builds on existing methods.
The authors tackled the problem of noise in ultrasound images, which affects medical diagnosis, by proposing a tuned version of the WNNM denoising method integrated into a deep learning framework, achieving real-time performance with improved image quality.
Ultrasound images are widespread in medical diagnosis for muscle-skeletal, cardiac, and obstetrical diseases, due to the efficiency and non-invasiveness of the acquisition methodology. However, ultrasound acquisition introduces noise in the signal, which corrupts the resulting image and affects further processing steps, e.g., segmentation and quantitative analysis. We define a novel deep learning framework for the real-time denoising of ultrasound images. Firstly, we compare state-of-the-art methods for denoising (e.g., spectral, low-rank methods) and select WNNM (Weighted Nuclear Norm Minimisation) as the best denoising in terms of accuracy, preservation of anatomical features, and edge enhancement. Then, we propose a tuned version of WNNM (tuned-WNNM) that improves the quality of the denoised images and extends its applicability to ultrasound images. Through a deep learning framework, the tuned-WNNM qualitatively and quantitatively replicates WNNM results in real-time. Finally, our approach is general in terms of its building blocks and parameters of the deep learning and high-performance computing framework; in fact, we can select different denoising algorithms and deep learning architectures.