A new compounding approach for speckle reduction [diagnostic ultrasound]

A new compounding technique for reducing speckle brightness variations is proposed. This method is based on speckle decorrelation of signals under different strain states. The different strain states can be created using externally applied forces. Such forces produce 3D tissue motion. By correcting the in-plane motion, the images under different strain states have identical characteristics except for speckle appearance due to un-corrected out-of-plane motion. Therefore, speckle noise is reduced without affecting in-plane spatial resolution. Experimental results indicated that speckle brightness variations were reduced by more than 50% with an applied strain at 4.8%