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Abstract

A method and an apparatus are provided for combining spatial and temporal filtering for blood speckle reduction in high frequency ultrasound images wherein a sequence of image frames is processed to produce a binary mask. In this mask, a first value is assigned to regions of identified blood speckles and a second value is assigned to regions of the remainder. The images are then modulated with the mask, i.e., by applying different filtering techniques to assigned blood regions and assigned nonblood (i.e., tissue) regions, the filtering techniques having been selected to optimize images for the type of feature to be highlighted based on differences in frequency sensitivity between blood and tissue. The images are preferably in polar coordinate format. The degree of blood speckle suppression can be determined based on the actual values of the pixels at the same spatial location in given frames.

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