Ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus and an ultrasonic image processing apparatus

An ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus comprising circuitry configured to perform:

• executing transmission and reception of an ultrasonic wave in a B-mode with respect to a predetermined region of a tested body to generate ultrasonic image data;
• hierarchically performing multi-resolution decomposition of the ultrasonic image data to acquire low-frequency decomposed image data with first to n-th levels and high-frequency decomposed image data with first to n-th levels, where “n” is a natural number equal to or larger than 2;
• calculating a filter coefficient using the high-frequency decomposed image data in each layer obtained by performing the multi-resolution decomposition;
• using the filter coefficient to perform nonlinear anisotropic diffusion filtering on the low-frequency decomposed image data or obtained data from a next lower layer and generate edge information on a signal, for every layer, from the high-frequency decomposed image data,
• controlling a signal level of the high-frequency decomposed image data in each layer obtained by performing the multi-resolution decomposition for every layer on the basis of the edge information of each of the layers;
• and
• acquiring ultrasonic image data by hierarchically performing multi-resolution mixing of data obtained by the nonlinear anisotropic diffusion filtering or data from a next lower layer and data obtained by the controlling.