Patent ID: 8202221

Claim:
An ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus comprising: a data generating unit that executes transmission and reception of an ultrasonic wave in a B-mode with respect to a predetermined region of a tested body and generates ultrasonic image data; a decomposition unit that hierarchically performs multiresolution decomposition of the ultrasonic image data and acquires low-frequency decomposed image data with first to n-th levels (where, ‘n’ is a natural number equal to or larger than 2) and high-frequency decomposed image data with first to n-th levels; a filtering unit that performs nonlinear anisotropic diffusion filtering on output data from a next lower layer or the low-frequency decomposed image data in a lowest layer and generates edge information on a signal, for every layer, from the output data from the next lower layer or the low-frequency decomposed image data in the lowest layer; a high-frequency level control unit that controls a signal level of the high-frequency decomposed image data for every layer on the basis of the edge information of each of the layers; and a mixing unit that acquires ultrasonic image data by hierarchically performing multiresolution mixing of output data of the filtering unit and output data of the high-frequency level control unit which are obtained in each of the layers.