An ultrasonic observation apparatus includes: a first conversion unit that converts an ultrasonic signal as a time domain signal reflected from a specimen into a frequency domain signal; a regression analysis unit that calculates a regression expression for the frequency domain signal; an attenuation correction coefficient calculation unit that calculates an attenuation correction coefficient which is obtained by dividing a difference between first-order coefficients in the regression expressions at two points having different reception depths by a difference between the reception depths at the two points; an attenuation correction processing unit that performs attenuation correction processing on the frequency domain signal based on the attenuation correction coefficient; a second conversion unit that converts the frequency domain signal after the attenuation correction processing, into a second time domain signal; and an image data generation unit that generates ultrasonic image data based on the second time domain signal.