Patent ID: 8351731

Claim:
An image processing apparatus comprising: an image-information obtaining unit to obtain image information; an image-component separating unit to separate the image information obtained by the image-information obtaining unit into luminance information and color information; a luminance-noise removing unit to remove noise from the luminance information separated by the image-component separating unit; a color-noise removing unit to remove noise from the color information separated by the image-component separating unit; a filter-size storage unit that stores an imaging condition indicating an imaging state at a time of imaging the image information and a size of the filter, in association with each other; a parameter storage unit that stores the imaging condition indicating the imaging state at the time of imaging the image information and a σ value and a κ value, which are parameters in a Laplacian of Gaussian function, in association with each other, wherein the σ value indicates a parameter that determines a width of the filter and the κ value indicates a parameter representing a strength of edge enhancement; an imaging-condition obtaining unit to obtain the imaging condition; a filter determining unit to specify a size of a filter associated with the imaging condition obtained by the imaging-condition obtaining unit from the filter-size storage unit, and to specify the σ value and the κ value associated with the imaging condition obtained by the imaging-condition obtaining unit from the parameter storage unit and to determine the filter based on a Laplacian of Gaussian function defined by the specified size, the specified σ value, and the κ value: an edge extracting unit to extract edge information from the luminance information separated by the image-component separating unit, by using the filter determined by the filter determining unit; and an image-information synthesizing unit to synthesize image information based on the edge information extracted by the edge extracting unit, the luminance information from which the noise is removed by the luminance-noise removing unit, and the color information from which the noise is removed by the color-noise removing unit.