Separation of the diffuse, specular and quasiperiodic signal components in medical ultrasound images

Presents a multicomponent physical model of the reflected medical ultrasound signal. The movement as a function of time and depth along a reflected ultrasound beam is modeled as a superposition of three groups of particle vibrations, corresponding to the diffuse, specular and quasiperiodic structures. Harmonic models for the particle movements as a function of time and depth are derived. These models combined with reasonable physical boundary conditions are used to design a one-dimensional algorithm to compute the diffuse, specular and quasiperiodic acoustical signal components separately. Testing the algorithm on a radiofrequency image of the liver in vivo, the resulting single component images showed structures that were not visible in the envelope image, and contained less speckle. Together, the new images appeared to convey more useful diagnostic information than the ordinary envelope ultrasound image