Despeckling Algorithms for Optical Coherence Tomography Images

Abstract

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a non-invasive imaging technique widely used in ophthalmology. The presence of speckle affects the quality of OCT images. Despeckling is necessary to improve its visual quality, and it is an integral part of software packages used for the computerized analysis of OCT. Even though a few methods for despeckling OCT are available in the literature, a cross-comparison of their performance is not known to be available. In this chapter, the techniques available in the literature for despeckling the OCT images have been identified. The results of the despeckling algorithms are compared both qualitatively and quantitatively by concerning the noise suppression capability and feature preservation. Among the available techniques, iterative adaptive unbiased (IAUB) filter is found to be superior as far as its performance regarding despeckling on retinal OCT images.