IEEE Trans Ultrason Ferroelectr Freq Control. 2021 May;68(5):1487-1495. doi: 10.1109/TUFFC.2020.3035965. Epub 2021 Apr 26.
The widespread development of new ultrasound image formation techniques has created a need for a standardized methodology for comparing the resulting images. Traditional methods of evaluation use quantitative metrics to assess the imaging performance in specific tasks, such as point resolution or lesion detection. Quantitative evaluation is complicated by unconventional new methods and nonlinear transformations of the dynamic range of data and images. Transformation-independent image metrics have been proposed for quantifying task performance. However, clinical ultrasound still relies heavily on visualization and qualitative assessment by expert observers. We propose the use of histogram matching to better assess differences across image formation methods. We briefly demonstrate the technique using a set of sample beamforming methods and discuss the implications of such image processing. We present variations of histogram matching and provide code to encourage the application of this method within the imaging community.
新的超声成象技术的广泛发展，需要一种标准化的方法来比较其结果图象。传统的评估方法使用定量指标来评估在特定任务（如点分辨率或病灶检测）中的成像性能。由于新的非传统方法和数据及图象动态范围的非线性变换，定量评估变得复杂。已提出用于量化任务性能的与变换无关的图象指标。然而，临床超声仍然严重依赖于专家观察者的可视化和定性评估。我们建议使用直方图匹配来更好地评估图象形成方法之间的差异。我们使用一组示例波束形成方法简要地演示了该技术，并讨论了这种图像处理的影响。我们给出了直方图匹配的各种变化，并提供了代码，以鼓励在成像界应用这种方法。
