Ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus and image filtering method of the same

An ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus comprising:

• an ultrasonic probe which transmits an ultrasonic to and receiving an ultrasonic from an object of examination;
• a transmitting/receiving section which transmits electrical signals to and receiving electrical signals from the ultrasonic probe in order to transmit/receive an ultrasonic in a predetermined scanning direction;
• an image processing section which uses the pixel value of each of the pixels found in a predetermined range relative to a reference position of image data as input matrix and computes an output value corresponding to the input according to the received ultrasonic signal obtained in the predetermined scanning direction and computationally determines an output value corresponding to the input for processing;
• and
• a display section which displays an ultrasonic image obtained by the processing by the image processing section, wherein
• the image processing section sorts the elements of the first direction on an element by element basis in the second direction orthogonal to the first direction of the input matrix, extracts the elements of the first direction including the reference position, surrounding elements of the first direction from the matrix obtained as a result of the sorting, and computationally determines the median of the elements of the partial matrix and outputs the median as the output value, the partial matrix having a number of elements in the first direction smaller than number of elements in the first direction of the input matrix and a number of elements in the second direction same as the number of elements in the second direction of the input matrix.

An image filtering method of using a pixel value of each of pixels found in a predetermined range relative to a reference position of image data as input matrix and computing an output value corresponding to the input, the method comprising:

• a first step of sorting the elements of the first direction on an element by element basis in the second direction orthogonal to the first direction of the input matrix;
• a second step of extracting the elements of the first direction including the reference position and surrounding elements of the first direction from the matrix obtained as a result of the sorting, the partial matrix having a number of elements in the first direction smaller than number of elements in the first direction of the input matrix and a number of elements in the second direction same as the number of elements in the second direction of the input matrix;
• and
• a third step of computationally determining the median of the elements of the partial matrix and outputting the median as the output value.