PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide technique which especially uses to coordinates in a time direction a noise reduction processing utilizing a directional characteristic amount, reduces a noise and a speckle in the time direction, and emphasizes a tissue part.SOLUTION: The apparatus includes a multiplex resolution degradation section 101 in which n-th degree multiplex resolution degradation is performed to ultrasonic image data in the spatial or time direction of the area and in the spatial direction of the area, and which obtains low-pass degradation image data and high-pass degradation image data in a k-th degree (1&lek&len), a characteristic amount calculation section 102, which computes a characteristic amount, a filtering process section 103, which performs a filtering processing based on the characteristic amount and acquires the low-pass degradation image data after the processing, and a multiplex resolution composition section 104, which repeats multiplex resolution composition until ultrasonic image data after the processing, which have the same image pixel size as original data, is formed.COPYRIGHT: (C)2011,JPO&INPIT【課題】方向性特徴量を利用したノイズ低減処理を、特に時間方向の座標に対して用い、時間方向のノイズやスペックルを低減し組織部分を強調する技術を提供する。【解決手段】超音波画像データに対して、前記領域の空間方向、又は、時間方向及び前記領域の空間方向に、n次の多重解像度分解を行い、k次(1≦k≦n)における、低域分解画像データと高域分解画像データとを得る多重解像度分解部101と、特徴量を算出する特徴量算出部102と、特徴量に基づいてフィルタリング処理を施し処理後低域分解画像データを取得するフィルタリング処理部103と、元のデータと同じ画像ピクセルサイズを有する処理後超音波画像データを生成するまで多重解像度合成を繰り返す多重解像度合成部104とを備える。【選択図】図1
