PARTICLE IMAGE ANALYSIS APPARATUS, PARTICLE IMAGE ANALYSIS SYSTEM, PARTICLE IMAGE ANALYSIS METHOD, AND PROGRAM FOR PARTICLE IMAGE ANALYSIS APPARATUS

In order to provide a particle image analysis apparatus that can obtain information on the basis of individual particle images not only for a particle having a high appearance frequency but also for a particle having a low appearance frequency while suppressing a data capacity required to store the individual particle images, there is provided a particle analysis apparatus that analyzes a particle characteristic on the basis of an original image in which particles or a particle group, and the particle analysis apparatus includes the followings: an individual particle image generation unit 52 that extracts individual particles from the original image and generates individual particle images PI; a particle characteristic calculation unit 54 that calculates one or a plurality of types of particle characteristics for a particle in each of the individual particle images PI, based on the each of the individual particle images PI; a classification unit 56 that classifies, with respect to a plurality of classes defined by some or all of the one or plurality of types of particle characteristics, the particles into the classes that correspond to the calculated one or plurality of particle characteristics; and an individual particle image storing unit 57 that stores in a storage S the individual particle images PI of particles belonging to each of the plurality of classes, the individual particle images stored in the storage being less than or equal to a storage upper limit number set for the each of the plurality of classes.