Patent ID: 7418139

Claim:
A contour extraction apparatus extracting at least one contour of a target object from images obtained by an image pickup of the target object by cameras, the contour extraction apparatus comprising: a node locator locating a plurality of nodes on a periphery of a region, which includes the target object, within the image; a contour deformation unit deforming the contour, which is formed by connecting nodes at a predetermined connection order, by shifting the position of each node to the position where a predefined energy function becomes minimum; an internode distance calculator measuring internode distances about all combination of nodes constituting the contour excepting the internode distance between adjacent nodes; and a connection creator creating a connection line to divide the contour when a combination of nodes whose internode distance is below a first threshold value exists, wherein the connection line connects one of nodes in the combination with the node adjacent to the other node in the combination, the node adjacent to the other node is the node being positioning upstream or downstream in the predetermined connection order with respect to the other node, and the first threshold value is determined in accordance with the distance to the target object.