Nonsubsampled contourlet transform based image fusion for ultrasound tomography

Compared with the conventional ultrasound imaging technology, ultrasound tomography imaging is more accurate in detecting early breast cancers because it can provide the whole breast quantitative image with transmission measurements and reflective measurements. In ultrasound tomography the transmission image can provide the information about the tissue properties of sound speed and attenuation, the reflection image can provide the information about the reflecting surface of internal breast tissue. An efficient image fusion approach which applies fusion rules to the nonsubsampled contourlet transform decomposition coefficients of the transmission image and the reflection image for ultrasound tomography is proposed. The experiments indicate that the fused image can provide clear tissue reflective interface and distinguished inner information of the tissue. The experimental results also show that the proposed fusion approach is more efficient for ultrasound tomography than some commonly used fusion approaches.