Patent ID: 8687895

Claim:
An image processing apparatus comprising: a contour extraction unit configured to extract contours of color regions, each of which includes continuous pixels having the same pixel value, in image data; an intersection detection unit configured to detect, as an intersection, a point which satisfies one of a point at which not less than three different colors meet, and a point at which pixels which neighbor in oblique directions have the same color and pixels which neighbor in right and left directions and in upper and lower directions have different colors, in each of contours extracted by said contour extraction unit; a division boundary line storage unit configured to store, in association with a contour in which the intersection is detected by said intersection detection unit, contours divided at the intersection as boundary lines; a non-division boundary line storage unit configured to store, in association with a contour in which the intersection is not detected by said intersection detection unit, the contour as a boundary line without dividing the contour; a function approximation unit configured to execute function approximation for each of boundary lines stored by said division boundary line storage unit and said non-division boundary line storage unit; and a boundary line connection unit configured to reconstruct contours of the color regions using the boundary lines after the function approximation of said function approximation unit.