Patent ID: 7564490

Claim:
A noise reduction apparatus comprising: a color-component extraction device for inputting image data representing an image in which each pixel of a number of pixels constituting one frame of an image has one color component from among a plurality of color components, the color components having a distribution that is systematic, and extracting, on a per-color-component basis, color image data representing a pixel within a zone in which the color image data is regarded as having correlativity; a noise removal device for removing uncorrelated noise, which is contained in the color image data that has been extracted on a per-color-component basis, while maintaining correlativity of the color image data that has been extracted by said color-component extraction device on a per-color-component basis; and a control device for exercising control in such a manner that color-component extraction processing by said color-component extraction device and noise removal processing by said noise removal device is repeated with regard to the one frame of color image data.