Reducing peak hopping artifacts in ultrasonic strain estimation with the Viterbi algorithm

Internal strain resulting from tissue deformation can be estimated by correlation of speckle patterns within radio frequency (RF) ultrasound images. For large deformations, random correlations between speckle kernels may exceed the true peak. In this study, we use the Viterbi algorithm to overcome peak hopping artifacts. RF data were generated for an average strain of 5%. Simulations were performed for a medium with an inclusion at the center of elastic modulus 6 times that of the surrounding medium. Results show that Viterbi processing can significantly reduce peak hopping.