Architecture Design for Median Filter

Speckle is a type of multiplicative noise degrading visual quality in imaging using ultrasonography(USG) resulting in difficulty of assessment by experts. Thus speckle reduction algorithms are required for enhancing image quality of USG and assisting in their visual assessment. The objective of this work is to define an efficient technique for median filter of USG images. In this paper we have captured real life USG images, applied median filter algorithm to reduce noise, and proposed a suitable hardware architecture for the implementation of this algorithm. MATLAB has been used to develop our algorithm and logic verification of the proposed architecture has been done using VHDL. We have also done the simulation and FPGA based synthesis of the proposed architecture for the most commonly used target hardware to analyze the hardware cost.