Abstract: A new algorithm on extraction of anatomical contour in medical image is presented,by combining anisotropic diffusion and wavelet packet decomposition for edge detection of the image.By the algorithm,firstly,a novel FAB diffusion filter is used for both image smoothing and noise removal,as well as edge enhancement.Then,a self-adaptable edge detection algorithm based on wavelet packet decomposition is applied to detect edges.Finally,test examples and encouraging result are presented to demonstrate the efficiency of the approach for medical image processing.