Ultrasound imaging works on the principle of transmitting ultrasound waves into the body and
reconstructs the images of internal organs based on the strength of the echoes. Ultrasound imaging
is considered to be safer, economical and can image the organs in real-time, which makes it widely
used diagnostic imaging modality in health-care. Ultrasound imaging covers the broad spectrum
of medical diagnostics; these include diagnosis of kidney, liver, pancreas, fetal monitoring, etc.
Currently, the diagnosis through ultrasound scanning is clinic-centered, and the patients who are
in need of ultrasound scanning has to visit the hospitals for getting the diagnosis. The services of
an ultrasound system are constrained to hospitals and did not translate to its potential in remote
health-care and point-of-care diagnostics due to its high form factor, shortage of sonographers, low
signal to noise ratio, high diagnostic subjectivity, etc. In this thesis, we address these issues with an
objective of making ultrasound imaging more reliable to use in point-of-care and remote health-care
applications. To achieve the goal, we propose (i) computer-assisted algorithms to improve diagnostic
accuracy and assist semi-skilled persons in scanning, (ii) speckle suppression algorithms to improve
the diagnostic quality of ultrasound image, (iii) a reliable telesonography framework to address
the shortage of sonographers, and (iv) a programmable portable ultrasound scanner to operate in
point-of-care and remote health-care applications
