A consideration on generalized Rician distribution expression for the speckle pattern on the ultrasound B-scan and its experimental confirmation

Analysis of speckle image texture in ultrasound B-scans is considered. The authors examine the theoretical determination of the probability density function of the speckle image texture for the magnitude. First, the occurrence mechanism of speckle image texture is treated by introducing a functional model for the ultrasound diagnosis equipment system. As a result, a unified probability density function expression has been explicitly proposed and it has been clarified that the present expression agrees with the well-known Rayleigh and Rician probability density functions as two special cases. Then the legitimacy and the effectiveness of proposed stochastic analysis method have been experimentally confirmed by applying it to the speckle pattern of a clinical B-scan image actually utilized for diagnostic purposes