Patent ID: 7423521

Claim:
A vehicular visual assistance system, comprising: image pickup means mounted on a housing of a mirror mounted externally on a side portion of a vehicle, the image pickup means being capable of picking up an image of a fore-and-aft region extending from an outer edge of a vehicle tire outwardly along the side portion of the vehicle; a display monitor provided within a vehicle compartment, the display monitor being visible to a vehicle driver; and image processing means for displaying on the display monitor an image obtained by processing an image signal from the image pickup means, wherein the image pickup means is mounted on a lower part of the housing and is capable of picking up an image of a region which is continuous in the fore-and-aft direction while simultaneously including part of a front region directly viewed by a vehicle driver on a driver's seat and part of a rear region indirectly viewed by the vehicle driver via said mirror, and wherein the image processing means displays on the display monitor a picked up image of a region, among the regions whose images have been picked up by the image pickup means, for which at least front and rear boundaries thereof overlap the rear edge of the directly viewed region and the front edge of the indirectly viewed region, respectively.