Improvement of illumination artifacts in medical ultrasound images using a biologically based algorithm for compression of wide dynamic range

Medical ultrasonic B-scans often suffer from inherent artifacts that originate from the attenuation properties of the sonic beam in the living tissues. Common methods such as time gain compensation (TGC) do not yield satisfactory results. We tested a previous algorithm for compression of wide dynamic range in an attempt to address the above problem. This algorithm is based on a biological model that was also suggested for wide dynamic range and lightness constancy. It is based on retinal mechanisms of adaptation (gain control), both 'local', and 'remote', that enable also video image applications by taking into account the dynamics of human adaptation mechanisms. The results indicate that the algorithm succeeded in automatically exposing the details in very bright (i.e., saturated) and very dark zones in the same image. Such an exposure appears as a promising significant tool for better clinical diagnosis.