Patent ID: 8023748

Claim:
An image capturing apparatus for capturing an image with solid state imaging devices, the image capturing apparatus comprising: a compressing section for compressing digitalized data of an image captured with the solid state imaging devices; a memory for temporarily storing the compressed image data that is compressed by the compressing section; a decompressing section for decompressing the compressed image data that is read out from the memory; and a signal processing section for performing an image quality correction operation on the image data decompressed by the decompressing section, wherein the compressing section generates the compressed image data that contains (i) a maximum value and a minimum value of pixel data in a block constituted by the pixel data from a predetermined number of pixels; (ii) information regarding positions where the maximum value and the minimum value are located in the block; and (iii) quantized data obtained by subtracting the minimum value from each pixel data value of the block, except for the pixel data values of the block corresponding to the maximum value and the minimum value in the block, and then quantizing the results of the subtraction, wherein the quantized data for the block corresponds to a number of pixels equal to two pixels less than the predetermined number of pixels.