MONITORING APPARATUS

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To rapidly and accurately detect changes in status from a vast photographing range while reducing labor burden on a monitoring person and focusing only a desired image region. SOLUTION: When a panoramic image generated by picking up a photographing range while sequentially changing a photographing direction is monitored, the difference in luminance level between one unit image forming the generated panoramic image and a unit image in the same direction which has been picked up before the unit image is sequentially detected, the difference in luminance level is compared with a predetermined threshold, and predetermined information is displayed together with the generated panoramic image on a display 6 on the basis of this result of comparison. In this case, prior to executing the photographing, the differences in luminance levels are compared between the unit images in the same photographing direction which have been generated by previously picking up the photographing range several times, and a region where the predetermined threshold is set at a large value and/or a region where the comparison is not performed are set for each unit image on the basis of a result of comparison. COPYRIGHT: (C)2005,JPO&NCIPI