Patent ID: 7630573

Claim:
A noise reduction apparatus comprising: an image data dividing device for dividing one frame of applied image data into a first image data having low-frequency bands, a second image data having low and intermediate-frequency bands and a third image data having low, intermediate and high-frequency bands; a first noise reduction processing circuit executing noise reduction processing of the first image data; a second noise reduction processing circuit executing noise reduction processing of the second image data; a third noise reduction processing circuit executing noise reduction processing of the third image data; and an image combining device for combining the first image data outputted from said first noise reduction processing circuit, the second image data outputted from said second noise reduction processing circuit and the third image data outputted from said third noise reduction processing circuit, in such a manner that the first, second and third image data will represent one frame of an image, wherein the noise reduction processing in the first noise reduction circuit and the noise reduction processing in the third noise reduction circuit are weaker than the noise reduction processing in the second noise reduction circuit.