Patent ID: 8106934

Claim:
An image processing method, comprising: at least one of (a) recording an image on a thermally reversible recording medium that can reversibly change any one of its transparency and color tone depending on temperature by irradiating and heating the thermally reversible recording medium with a laser beam, and (b) erasing the image recorded on the thermally reversible recording medium by heating the thermally reversible recording medium; detecting at least one of a peripheral temperature and a recording medium temperature of the thermally reversible recording medium; and controlling irradiation conditions of the laser beam to be irradiated to the thermally reversible recording medium based on said at least one of the recording medium temperature of the thermally reversible recording medium and the peripheral temperature, wherein the laser beam irradiated on the thermally reversible recording medium is circular-shaped, wherein a light irradiation intensity I 1 at a center position of the circular-shaped laser beam irradiated in the image recording and a light irradiation intensity I 2 on an 80% light energy bordering surface to the total light energy of the irradiated circular-shaped laser beam satisfy the expression, 0.40≦I 1 /I 2 ≦2.00, wherein in the image recording, at least a portion of a first image line and at least a portion of a second image line are to be recorded, said first and second image lines are amongst a plurality of image lines constituting an image, the first image line intersects the second image line at an overlapped portion thereof, and any one of the first image line and the second image line is not to be recorded at said overlapped portion, and wherein when a distance between an edge of the image line at the overlap portion where the image line is not recorded and another image line recorded at the overlap portion is represented by “L”, and a width of the image line recorded at the overlap portion is represented by “R”, the expression, (−⅓)R<L<R, is satisfied, wherein in the case that said image line overlaps said another image line, “L” is less than zero.