Abstract: An image processing apparatus includes an image capturing unit configured to capture temporally sequential images; a calculating unit configured to calculate weights of a plurality of luminance distributions; a classifying unit configured to classify a temporal change state of the luminance of one or a plurality of pixels into a plurality of classes; a class transition determining unit configured to determine temporal transition of the luminance change state; a reference luminance value updating unit configured to update a reference luminance value of the one or the plurality of pixels; a change-of-luminance detecting unit configured to detect whether the luminance of the one or the plurality of pixels has changed; and a detected change storing unit configured to store information to identify a position of the one or the plurality of pixels in the image where a change has occurred and information about the time when the change occurred.

Abstract: An image processing apparatus includes an image capturing unit configured to capture temporally sequential images; a calculating unit configured to calculate weights of a plurality of luminance distributions; a classifying unit configured to classify a temporal change state of the luminance of one or a plurality of pixels into a plurality of classes; a class transition determining unit configured to determine temporal transition of the luminance change state; a reference luminance value updating unit configured to update a reference luminance value of the one or the plurality of pixels; a change-of-luminance detecting unit configured to detect whether the luminance of the one or the plurality of pixels has changed; and a detected change storing unit configured to store information to identify a position of the one or the plurality of pixels in the image where a change has occurred and information about the time when the change occurred.

Abstract: An apparatuses and methods for correcting parallax information between pixels obtained by stereo image processing to more reliable values, wherein first a first parallax is calculated by establishing correspondence between pixels of a standard picture and pixels of a reference picture by an area base matching method using a predetermined evaluation function, a detected corresponding point is evaluated to be correct when the value of the evaluation function indicates a high correlation and then the calculated first parallax is used as it is, while when the value of the evaluation function shows a low correlation, the detected corresponding point is evaluated to be unreliable, the pixel exhibiting the highest correlation is found based on the value of the evaluation function between pixels contained in a predetermined pixel block having the pixel having the unreliable correspondence as a center pixel and the corresponding points, then the first parallax is replaced with the parallax of the found pixel for the c

Abstract: In order to measure a distance with high accuracy, a corresponding pixel extraction section reads a projection transformation matrix from a storage section, determines a reference pixel corresponding to a standard pixel, and outputs the pixel value thereof to a correlation value computation section. The correlation value computation section computes the mutual correlation value between a predetermined small area with the standard pixel being the center and a similar small area with the reference pixel being the center, as the sum of the squares of the difference of each pixel within the small area. A distance computation section extracts the point of the smallest value of an addition value input from the correlation value computation section and the points before and after it, creates a second-order curve passing through the three points, and outputs a distance corresponding to the smallest value of the second-order curve, as the distance of the standard pixel, to a distance image memory.

Abstract: An image processing apparatus performs predetermined processing for images captured by a plurality of image capturing apparatuses. In the image processing apparatus, the images captured by the image capturing apparatuses are as a base image and at least one reference image. Evaluation values representing correspondence in pixels in each reference image to the pixels of the base image are computed. The images captured by the image capturing apparatuses are assigned to groups so that each group includes the base image and at least one reference image. From groups obtained by the grouping, a group having highest base-image to reference-image correspondence is selected. A distance to a point on an object by determining parallax is computed based on the evaluation values for the selected group.