Patent ID: 9433399
Filing Date: 2016-09-06
CPC Classification: A61B,G01S

Claim Text:
1. An ultrasound diagnosis apparatus comprising: decomposing circuitry configured to decompose ultrasound image data into low-frequency decomposed image data and high-frequency decomposed image data at each of a predetermined number of hierarchical levels, by performing a hierarchical multi-resolution analysis; diffusion filter circuitry configured to apply, at a lowest hierarchical level of the predetermined number of hierarchical levels, a non-linear anisotropic diffusion filter to the low-frequency decomposed image data and the high-frequency decomposed image data at the lowest hierarchical level, configured to apply, at each of the hierarchical levels higher than the lowest hierarchical level, a non-linear anisotropic diffusion filter to data output from a hierarchical level immediately underneath that has been reconstructed by performing a multi-resolution analysis and to the high-frequency decomposed image data at that hierarchical level, and configured to generate, for each of the hierarchical levels, edge information of a signal either from the low-frequency decomposed image data at the lowest hierarchical level or from the data output from the hierarchical level immediately underneath; adjusting circuitry configured to adjust a signal level of the high-frequency decomposed image data to which the non-linear anisotropic diffusion filter was applied, based on the edge information generated by the diffusion filter circuitry on the same hierarchical level as the hierarchical level of the high-frequency decomposed image data at each of the hierarchical levels; and reconstructing circuitry configured to: wherein at the lowest hierarchical level, the diffusion filter circuitry applies the non-linear anisotropic diffusion filter to the high-frequency decomposed image data at the lowest hierarchical level by using a diffusion filter coefficient calculated based on a structure tensor and the edge information detected from the low-frequency decomposed image data at the lowest hierarchical level, whereas at each of the hierarchical levels higher than the lowest hierarchical level, the diffusion filter circuitry applies the non-linear anisotropic diffusion filter to the high-frequency decomposed image data at that hierarchical level by using a diffusion filter coefficient calculated based on a structure tensor and the edge information detected from the output data that is output by the reconstructing circuitry at the hierarchical level immediately underneath.