Patent ID: 8416328

Claim:
An image processing apparatus comprising: a block data acquisition section configured to receive image data in which rows of alternately disposed blue pixels and green pixels and rows of alternately disposed green pixels and red pixels are alternately disposed along a column direction, and to acquire 3×3 pixel block data from the image data to have one red pixel positioned at a center, four blue pixels positioned at corners and four green pixels positioned respectively at above/below/left/right portions of the center; a contrast boundary estimation section configured to compute blue value differences between blue values of diagonal pairs of the blue pixels in the block data, and to estimate a direction of a contrast boundary in the block data based on the blue value differences; and a pixel interpolation processing section configured to compute a blue value based on the blue values of the four blue pixels within the block date according to the estimated direction of the contrast boundary, to compute a green value based on green values of two green pixels within a 2×2 pixel pattern contained in the block data, and to output a color image pixel correspondingly with the pixel pattern to have (1) a red value of the red pixel, (2) the computed blue value and (3) the computed green value.