Despeckle Filtering for Ultrasound Imaging and Video, Volume II

In ultrasound imaging and video visual perception is hindered by speckle multiplicative noise that degrades the quality. Noise reduction is therefore essential for improving the visual observation quality or as a pre-processing step for further automated analysis, such as image/video segmentation, texture analysis and encoding in ultrasound imaging and video. The goal of the first book (book 1 of 2 books) was to introduce the problem of speckle in ultrasound image and video as well as the theoretical background, algorithmic steps, and the MatlabTM for the following group of despeckle filters: linear despeckle filtering, non-linear despeckle filtering, diffusion despeckle filtering, and wavelet despeckle filtering. The goal of this book (book 2 of 2 books) is to demonstrate the use of a comparative evaluation framework based on these despeckle filters (introduced on book 1) on cardiovascular ultrasound image and video processing and analysis. More specifically, the despeckle filtering evaluation framework is based on texture analysis, image quality evaluation metrics, and visual evaluation by experts. This framework is applied in cardiovascular ultrasound image/video processing on the tasks of segmentation and structural measurements, texture analysis for differentiating between two classes (i.e. normal vs disease) and for efficient encoding for mobile applications. It is shown that despeckle noise reduction improved segmentation and measurement (of tissue structure investigated), increased the texture feature distance between normal and abnormal tissue, improved image/video quality evaluation and perception and produced significantly lower bitrates in video encoding. Furthermore, in order to facilitate further applications we have developed in MATLABTM two different toolboxes that integrate image (IDF) and video (VDF) despeckle filtering, texture analysis, and image and video quality evaluation metrics. The code for these toolsets is open source and these are available to download complementary to the two monographs.

Christos P. Loizou received his B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering, a Dipl-Ing (M.Sc.) degree in computer science and telecommunications from the University of Kaisserslautern, Kaisserslautern, Germany, and his Ph.D. degree on ultrasound image analysis of the carotid artery from the Department of Computer Science, Kingston University, London, UK, in 1986, 1990, and 2005, respectively. From 1996- 2000,he was a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science, Higher Technical Institute, Nicosia, Cyprus. Since 2000, he has been at the Department of Computer Science, Intercollege, Cyprus and is now a campus program coordinator. Since 2005, he has also been an Adjunct Professor of Medical Image and video processing, in the Department of Electrical Engineering, and Computer Engineering and Informatics, Cyprus University of Technology, Cyprus. He has also been an Associated Researcher at the Institute of Neurology and Genetics, Nicosia, Cyprus since 2000. Dr. Loizou was a supervisor of a number of Ph.D. and B.Sc. students in the area of computer image analysis and telemedicine. He was involved in the research activity of several scientific Cypriot and European research projects and has authored or co-authored 28 referred journals, 54 conference papers, 3 books, and 10 book chapters in the fields of image and video analysis. His current research interests include medical imaging, signal, image and video processing, motion and video analysis, pattern recognition, and biosignal analysis in ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging, and computer applications in medicine. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, serves as a reviewer in many IEEE Transactions and other journals and is a chair and co-chair at many IEEE conferences. He lives in Limassol, Cyprus, with his wife and children, a boy and a girl.Constantinos S. Pattichis was born in Cyprus on January 30, 1959 and received his diploma as technician engineer from the Higher Technical Institute in Cyprus in 1979, a B.Sc. inelectrical engineering from the University of New Brunswick, Canada, in 1983, the M.Sc. in biomedical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, USA, in 1984, an M.Sc. in neurology from the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK, in 1991, and his Ph.D. in electronic engineering from the University of London, UK, in 1992. He is currently a Professor with the Department of Computer Science of the University of Cyprus. His research interests include ehealth and mhealth, medical imaging, biosignal analysis, life sciences informatics, and intelligent systems. He has been involved in numerous projects in these areas funded by EU, the National Research Foundation of Cyprus, the INTERREG and other bodies, like the FISTAR, GRANATUM, LINKED2SAFETY, MEDUCATOR, LONG LASTING MEMORIES, INTRAMEDNET, INTERMED, FUTURE HEALTH, AMBULANCE, EMERGENCY, ACSRS, TELEGYN, HEALTHNET, IASIS, IPPOKRATIS, and others with a total funding managed of more than 6 million Euros. He has published 90 refereed journal and 200 conference papers, and 27 chapters in books in these areas.