Patent ID: 7656443

Claim:
An image processing apparatus comprising: an optical system having distortion aberration characteristics for expanding a central part and compressing a peripheral part of an image plane; an image sensor for photodetecting an optical image via the optical system, converting the optical image to image signals, and outputting the image signals; a correction coefficient output circuit for outputting a correction coefficient for correcting the image signal with respect to a defect pixel of the image sensor, wherein the correction coefficient is determined based on the distortion aberration characteristics and a position of a peripheral pixel around the defect pixel; and a correction value computing circuit for computing a correction value with respect to the image signal of the defect pixel, based on the image signal of the peripheral pixel and the correction coefficient; wherein the correction coefficient output circuit includes: a defect pixel detection circuit for detecting the defect pixel; a peripheral pixel position output circuit for outputting the position of the peripheral pixel with respect to the detected defect pixel; an area discrimination circuit for outputting an area discrimination signal for indicating which of image areas the peripheral pixel belongs to based on the position of the peripheral pixel, wherein the image areas are defined by area division in accordance with the distortion aberration characteristics; and an area correction coefficient selecting circuit for outputting the correction coefficient corresponding to the area discrimination signal, from among the correction coefficients assigned to the image areas.