An embedded system design of selective window speckle noise suppression filter for ultrasound images

This paper presents a novel approach for speckle reduction of ultrasound image and its implementation using EDK 7.1i (Embedded Development Kit) on ML310 embedded development platform wherein the image is read from an image data file to a set of slave registers in the filter core through the On-Chip Peripheral Bus (OPB) and thereby processed in the filter core. Speckle is a phenomenon in ultrasonic pulse-echo measurements, caused by the coherent nature of the imaging source. When an acoustic wave propagates through a scattering medium, all the wavelets generated by the reflection of the incident wave on randomly distributed scatterers, interfere on the surface of the receiving transducer in a constructive or destructive way, depending on their relative phase forming speckle noise.