There is described a Minimal Iterativity Anisotropic Diffusion (MIAD) approach that estimates the required number of iterations N as a function of the image structure-under-noise ρ and the bound of the noise η. The time step λ is related to the image structure-under-noise ρ and to the bound of noise λ. The stopping time is calculated using T=λ·N, and the edge strength σ is determined as a function of T, η, and ρ.