Patent ID: 8396289

Claim:
A discrimination apparatus, comprising: a separating unit configured to separate N kinds, N being a natural number of 3 or greater, of digital color signals forming a single frame digital image signal obtained by image acquisition of a subject with a color imaging system into M kinds, M being a natural number of 2 or greater, M≦N, of wavelength ranges, based on known spectral characteristics of a subject to be discriminated, at least one of the M kinds of separated wavelength ranges including at least two of the N kinds of the digital color signals; a noise estimating unit configured to estimate a noise amount in each predetermined unit area in each of the M kinds of wavelength ranges separated by the separating unit; a noise reducing unit configured to perform a noise reducing processing on each of the M kinds of wavelength ranges separated by the separating unit, based on the noise amount estimated by the noise estimating unit; and a discriminating unit configured to perform a discriminating processing on the subject to be discriminated, based on the digital color signals in the M kinds of wavelength ranges noise-reduced by the noise reducing unit.