IMAGE PROCESSING APPARATUS

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To highly accurately detect the shadow of an object that causes erroneous detection, through simple procedures when detecting the object entering the field of a camera in processing a video signal from the camera. SOLUTION: In an area 45 set on the same floor as a floor on which an object 30 casts a shadow, a shadow 42 made by a reference object 40 is imaged and on the basis of luminance distribution of respective color components RGB that the obtained shadow image has, the shadow image is analyzed to calculate a reference luminance value for each color component. On the basis of the calculated reference luminance value, processing is performed to delete pixels of the shadow image from a background differential image from which the background is deleted (the object 30 and the shadow 32 are left). Thus, the image of the object 30 from which the shadow is deleted can be highly accurately detected and variation in a detection environment can also be adapted. COPYRIGHT: (C)2009,JPO&INPIT