Patent ID: 8129990

Claim:
An image processing apparatus that processes a series of observation images captured at a plurality of time points, in which a living cell is chronologically recorded, the image processing apparatus comprising: a cell recognizing unit that recognizes cell image areas corresponding to the living cell from the series of observation images; a characteristic amount measuring unit that measures cell characteristic amounts that represent characteristics of each of the cell image areas; a cell tracking unit that determines whether a tracking target area captured at a processing target time point among the cell image areas has an identity with a cell image area captured at a time point earlier than the processing target time point among the cell image areas, and that adds a tracking index indicating the an identity to the tracking target area on which it is determined that the tracking target area has the an identity; and a cell division detecting unit that regards a cell image area to which the tracking index is added as a target cell area to be processed, measuring relative position information indicating a relative position relationship between the target cell area and a peripheral cell area positioned around the target cell area, determining whether cell division has occurred in the living cell represented by the target cell area based on at least the relative position information, and detecting the target cell area on which it is determined that cell division has occurred.