Amrita International Conference of Women in Computing (AICWIC’13) Proceedings published by International Journal of Computer Applications® (IJCA) 19 Comparative Analysis of Speckle Noise Reducing Algorithms with Various Novelties R. Suganya Department of CSE, Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai - 625015, TamilNadu,India. P. Shalini Department of CSE, Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai- 625015. TamilNadu,India. S. Rajaram Department of CSE, Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai-625015, TamilNadu,India. ABSTRACT This work provides the knowledge about adaptive and anisotropic diffusion techniques for speckle noise removal from various types of ultrasonic liver images. A comparative study is made based on the performance of various algorithm such as anisotropic, speckle reducing anisotropic diffusion algorithm(SRAD), Laplacian pyramid non-linear diffusion (LPND) with various filters like Gaussian, Sobel, Average, Disk, Unsharp and log. Finally a fused algorithm is developed which performs all the filtering techniques on the input image and the statistical parameters are calculated for the output images obtained from all the filters. Key words Speckle noise, Ultrasonic, SRAD, and LPND. 1. INTRODUCTION Each imaging system suffers with a common problem of "Noise". Unwanted data which may reduce the contrast deteriorating the shape or size of objects in the image and blurring of edges or dilution of fine details in the image may be termed as noise. Mathematically there are two basic models of Noise; additive and multiplicative. Additive noise is systematic in nature and can be easily modeled and hence removed or reduced easily. Whereas multiplicative noise is image dependent, complex to model and hence difficult to reduce. When multiplicative noise caused by the de-phased echoes from the scatters appears, it is called "Speckle Noise". Although it appears as noise but it contains useful information because it is due to surroundings of the target. Speckle is the result of the diffuse scattering, which occurs when a sound wave (RF sound or Ultrasound) pulse randomly interferes with the small particles or objects on a scale comparable to the sound wavelength. In most cases, it is considered a contaminating factor that severely degrades image quality. Most speckle filters are developed for enhancing visualization of speckle images. Medical imaging like Ultrasound is very popular due to its low cost, least harmful to human body, real time view and small size [1] and [2]. Filter analysis has been done to select the best filter for a given image on the basis of some statistical parameters. Finally we designed the fused method which has various combinations of filters to give a better outcome. 1.1 Detailed Design Fig 1: Detailed design of proposed method with metrics of evaluation 2. SPECKLE NOISE IN ULTRASOUND IMAGES An ultrasound-based diagnostic medical imaging technique used to visualize muscles and many internal organs, their size, structure and any pathological injuries with real-time tomography images. It is also used to visualize a fetus during routine and emergency prenatal care. Obstetric sonography is commonly used during pregnancy. It is one of the most widely used diagnostic tools in modern medicine. The technology is relatively inexpensive and portable, especially when compared with other imaging techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT). Speckle noise affects all coherent imaging systems including medical ultrasound. Within each resolution