Patent ID: 7857752

Claim:
A medical image processing apparatus comprising: an image conversion section including a coordinate-system converting section for converting an image in an orthogonal coordinate system to an image in a polar coordinate system, for geometrically converting a medical image of a tubular part in vivo picked up and obtained by the coordinate-system converting section; a squamocolumnar junction detecting section for detecting a squamocolumnar junction that is a junction between a squamous epithelium and a columnar epithelium on the image of the polar coordinate system; an analyzing section for comparing an evaluation value for a feature value determined for the detected squamocolumnar junction and a predetermined reference value and calculating an analysis result; and an estimating section for estimating a relative positional relationship between an image pickup apparatus and the tubular part, wherein the medical image is a picked-up image, which is picked up by the image pickup apparatus, the image pickup apparatus being a direct-view type image pickup apparatus having the direction of the field of vision in the longitudinal direction of the tubular part.