Patent ID: 8180437

Claim:
A biological-information obtaining apparatus comprising: light-emitting means for emitting light; an image sensor for capturing images, in time sequence, obtained by irradiating a living body with the light emitted and by causing the light to be transmitted through the living body; a lens for causing the images to be formed on the image sensor; extreme-occurrence-time obtaining means for obtaining a time T 1 at which a first extreme value occurs in time sequence with respect to averaged brightness values of pixels in a first region in each of the captured images and a time T 2 at which a second extreme value occurs in time sequence with respect to averaged brightness values of pixels in a second region in each of the captured images; and pulse wave velocity calculation means for calculating a pulse wave velocity P=(Y×L/f)/(T 2 −T 1 ), where Y represents a distance on the image sensor, the distance corresponding to a distance between the first region and the second region, f represents a focal length of the lens, and L represents a distance between the lens and the living body when capturing the images.