Patent ID: 8085312

Claim:
An image input apparatus that inputs an image of an object residing within a living body, the apparatus comprising: a light source that irradiates near infrared light on the living body; a lens array that is arranged at a position facing the living body and includes a plurality of lenses, each of the lenses having a face with zero or negative power arranged at a side facing the living body and a face with positive power arranged at a side facing an image surface; an imaging unit that is arranged at the image surface side of the lens array and is configured to form a compound-eye image corresponding to a collection of ommatidium images formed by the lenses of the lens array; a bias component removal processing unit that is configured to generate a compound-eye image in which a bias component, due to light other than the near infrared light irradiated by the light source, is removed, the bias component being generated based on a difference between a compound-eye image formed by the imaging unit while the light source is turned ON and a compound-eye image is formed by the imaging unit while the light source is turned OFF; and a reconstruction unit that is configured to select a reference ommatidium image, obtain parallaxes of the ommatidium images with respect to the reference ommatidium image, and reconstruct the ommatidium images from the compound-eye image generated by the bias component removal processing unit based on the obtained parallaxes, said reconstructed ommatidium images being input as the image of the object.