Patent ID: 7831068

Claim:
An image processing method for detecting a predetermined object from an image, comprising: a detection step of detecting positions of feature candidate regions as candidates of two partial features of the predetermined object from the image; a first determination step of determining whether or not a first object candidate region, which is specified by positions of two of the feature candidate regions detected in the detection step, is a region of the predetermined object; a setting step of setting neighboring regions in a neighborhood of the positions of the two of the feature candidate regions, if the first object candidate region is determined not to be the region of the predetermined object in the first determination step; a selection step of sequentially selecting a first position in one of the neighboring regions and a second position in another one of the neighboring regions so as to generate all combinations of the first and second positions; a second determination step of determining whether or not a second object candidate region, which is specified by one of the combinations of the first and second positions as positions of two feature candidate regions, is the region of the predetermined object and, if not, repeating said second determination step using a different combination of the first and second positions as positions of two feature candidate regions; and an output step of outputting data of the first object candidate region if the first object candidate region is determined to be the region of the predetermined object, and outputting data of the second object candidate region if the second object candidate region is determined to be the region of the predetermined object.