Modeling the amplitude statistics of ultrasonic images.

In this paper, a new statistical model for representing the amplitude statistics of ultrasonic images is presented. The model is called the Rician inverse Gaussian (RiIG) distribution, due to the fact that it is constructed as a mixture of the Rice distribution and the Inverse Gaussian distribution. The probability density function (pdf) of the RiIG model is given in closed form as a function of three parameters. Some theoretical background on this new model is discussed, and an iterative algorithm for estimating its parameters from data is given. Then, the appropriateness of the RiIG distribution as a model for the amplitude statistics of medical ultrasound images is experimentally studied. It is shown that the new distribution can fit to the various shapes of local histograms of linearly scaled ultrasound data better than existing models. A log-likelihood cross-validation comparison of the predictive performance of the RiIG, the K, and the generalized Nakagami models turns out in favor of the new model. Furthermore, a maximum a posteriori (MAP) filter is developed based on the RiIG distribution. Experimental studies show that the RiIG MAP filter has excellent filtering performance in the sense that it smooths homogeneous regions, and at the same time preserves details.