Patent ID: 8200012

Claim:
An image determination apparatus for determining whether or not an image portion having a specific shape is contained in input image data, comprising: a processor operably performing the functions of: a binarization processing section that converts input image data into binary image data by binarization; a feature extracting section that detects connected components contained in the binary image data, each of which is a group of pixels having the same color and gathering in a connected state, detects circumscribing bounding boxes that circumscribe the connected components, respectively, removes predetermined connected components from all the connected components based on the sizes of the circumscribing bounding boxes and the numbers of black pixels in the circumscribing bounding boxes, and extracts the residual connected components as candidate connected components; and an image determination section that determines whether or not the image portion having the specific shape is contained in the input image data based on spectral data corresponding to the input image data and spectral data corresponding to each of plural pieces of template image data, wherein, while the spectral data corresponding to the input image data is generated by carrying out detection of edges on the extracted candidate connected components, generating distribution data of edge pixels contained in the binary image data and subjecting the generated distribution data to two-dimensional fast Fourier transform, the spectral data corresponding to each of plural pieces of template image data is generated by creating plural pieces of template image data having specific shapes geometrically similar but different in size, and subjecting each of the plural pieces of created template image data to two-dimensional fast Fourier transform.