Suppressing Amplitude Modulation Noise by Using Displacement Field Correction based on Displacement Location Estimation

Elastography based on pre-and post-compression signal window matching will generate amplitude modulation (AM) noise because of signal amplitude random fluctuation. On the basis of displacement location estimation, this paper proposes a displacement field correction (DFC) method to suppress AM noise. Firstly, the displacement locations are estimated by using the displacement location estimation algorithm. Then the displacement estimates are corrected by using the linear interpolation on the basis of displacement location estimates. Finally, the strains are estimated by using gradient operation and mapped into a grayscale image. Elastogram using the displacement field correction method has less AM noise significantly. The proposed method has the highest performance than signal amplitude log-compression (ALC) and amplitude modulation correction (AMC) at various strains or window-lengths. The DFC based on displacement location estimation can efficiently suppress AM noise.