Patent ID: 7940956

Claim:
A tracking apparatus that tracks a face position in a dynamic picture image by detecting a face of a tracking target in the image, the tracking apparatus comprising: a face detection device for detecting a face from the image; a storage device in which ambient information obtained from an ambient information obtaining region that does not include the face is stored in association with a face position detected by the face detection device, the ambient information obtaining region being positioned based on a relative positional relationship with the face position and having a size based on a relative size relationship with a size of the face, the ambient information, which does not include information regarding the face, comprising one or more of an area maximum color, a color histogram, silhouette and or texture information in the ambient information obtaining region; and an estimation device, which determines a plurality of position candidates of a current face based on a most recently detected face position instead of a face detected by the face detection device when the face of the tracking target is not detected by the face detection device, the estimation device obtaining a plurality of pieces of ambient information corresponding to the position candidates, and determining the current face position based on the obtained position candidate in which the ambient information being most similar to the ambient information associated with the most recently detected face position is obtained.