IMAGE PROCESSING METHOD, IMAGE PROCESSOR, AND SURFACE INSPECTION DEVICE USING THE IMAGE PROCESSOR

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an image processing method for obtaining an image including an object surface image having an edge area appropriately processed. SOLUTION: The method includes: an image acquisition step (S11) of acquiring a target image including pixel gray-scale values and including an object surface image; an edge image specification step (S13) of specifying, as an edge image, an image of an area which includes an edge line of the object surface image set in the target image and has a predetermined width in a direction orthogonal to the edge line; a conversion step (S14) of converting the edge image into a rectangular image having a width corresponding to the predetermined width; an image processing step (S15) of performing one-dimensional image processing to the rectangular image to successively process the contrast values of a plurality of pixels arranged in the direction orthogonal to the width direction; and a reverse conversion step (S16) of reversely converting the rectangular image subjected to the one-dimensional image processing to the image of the original area to generate a processed edge image. COPYRIGHT: (C)2010,JPO&INPIT