—In all methods of image denoising, there is a problem always exists that is how to distinguish noise and edge. Now wavelet and contourlet are main tools in image denoising, but threshold is the key in wavelet and contourlet denoising. In order to distinguish noise and edge well, most methods in wavelet denoising are about the improvement of threshold. Aiming to resolve this problem, a new method which makes full use of the model of anisotropic receptive fields and nonsubsampled contourlet transform is proposed and it can distinguish the noise and edge effectively without the need to choose a suitable threshold. Keywords-nonsubsampled contourlet; the model of anisotropic receptive fields; threshold