Patent ID: 7406198

Claim:
An image capture apparatus, comprising: a camera capturing image data of an object; an illumination illuminating the object using a plurality of wavelengths; a storage unit storing a recorded image of an object; a comparison-determination unit comparing the recorded image with captured image data of the object and determining whether or not the recorded image and the captured image data match each other; a material determination unit determining the material of the object from the image data of the object which has been obtained using the plurality of wavelengths; and an image buffer storing the captured image, wherein the camera captures the image data of the object placed above the camera and the illumination, and wherein the image data is captured first for material determination, the image data only required for the material determination is stored in the image buffer, the image date for comparison with the recorded image is captured second, thereby setting memory requirements for the image buffer smaller than an amount of data which can be stored in the image buffer.