Patent ID: 8254669

Claim:
A data processing apparatus comprising: a feature-value calculating unit that calculates an image feature value indicating a feature of image data; a case database including a case set including a correspondence of image feature values and functions; an optimum-function predicting unit that predicts an optimum function based on the case database and the image feature value calculated by the feature-value calculating unit; an area extracting unit that executes area extraction on the image data by using at least two area extraction systems; an evaluating unit that ranks each of extracted areas obtained by the area extraction systems and evaluates the area extraction systems; a feature-value-data recording unit that records, as supervised feature value data, the image feature value and a best one of the area extraction systems based on evaluation by the evaluating unit; and a learning unit that learns a selection rule for selecting the best area extraction system from the image feature value using the supervised feature value data, wherein the data processing apparatus builds the case database.