Noise reduction and enhancement of contour for median nerve detection in ultrasonic image

Abstract

Three-dimensional nerve information is required for the diagnosis of peripheral neuropathy. We have developed a prototype manipulating device and developed an algorithm for extracting peripheral nerves from the ultrasonic wave images captured using this probe and produce three-dimensional median nerve. Unlike the images captured by artificially manipulating the probe, the images captured by our device captures images of same area only at once. They are partially clear making it easy to extract nerve contours, or partially unclear (blurry) which are difficult to extract. In order to solve this problem, this paper reports that noise reduction and inter-organization edge emphasis are applied to ultrasonic wave images and nerves are extracted using the images.