Patent ID: 7605819

Claim:
An image processing device comprising: (A) a storage section, the storage section storing programs of a plurality of types of image processing modules, respective image processing engines thereof having mutually different types or contents of image processings, each of the image processing modules having: (1) an image processing engine that determines a fixed unit processing data amount specific to the image processing module and carries out a predetermined image processing on image data in the determined units of a fixed unit processing data amount, and (2) a control section inputting, to the image processing engine, image data, which is acquired from a preceding stage of its own module, in data amount units needed in order for the image processing engine to carry out processing in determined fixed units of the unit processing data amount, and outputting, to a following stage of its own module, image data, which has undergone the predetermined image processing by the image processing engine, or processing results of the predetermined image processing in units of the determined fixed unit processing data amount; and (B) a constructing section constructing, in response to an instruction of a desired image processing by a user, an image processing section for performing the desired image processing, which is formed by individual modules being connected in a pipeline form or a directed acyclic graph form, such that a buffer module is connected to each of the modules, and selects, on the basis of attributes of an image which is an object of the desired image processing and processing parameters which designate a type of the desired image processing to be executed, one or more image processing modules from among the plurality of types of image processing modules, the buffer module having: (1) a buffer which stores image data at at least one of a preceding stage and a following stage of each image processing module which is selected by the constructing section, and (2) a buffer control section which (a) when an image processing module is connected at a preceding stage of its own module, acquires from the preceding image procession a fixed write data amount specific to the preceding image processing module, and causes writing of image data, which is outputted from the preceding image processing module, to a storage region on the buffer that can store data of the fixed write data amount, and (b) when an image processing module is connected at a following stage of its own module, acquires from the following image processing module a fixed read data amount specific to the following image processing module, and carries out processing of causing the following image processing module to read, in units of the fixed read data amount, image data which is stored in the buffer, wherein the image processing device carries out the desired image processing on the image which is the object of the desired image processing, by the image processing section which is constructed by the constructing section.