Patent ID: 8180161

Claim:
An image classification device for classifying sets of image data into groups of similar images, comprising: an image database on a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium for storage of the sets of image data; a characteristic value set calculation unit configured to calculate a characteristic value set of the whole image of the set of image data, detect an edge of the corresponding set of image data, and calculate a characteristic value set of the detected edge portion, for each of the sets of image data; a first clustering unit that configured to classify the sets of image data into clusters based on the characteristic value sets of the whole images; a second clustering unit configured to further classify the clusters classified by the first clustering unit into clusters based on the characteristic value sets of the edge portions; a cluster integration unit configured to determine which pixels constitutes a subject in each of the sets of image data, based on a composition of the corresponding image, and integrate some of the clusters classified by the second clustering unit together based on the pixels constituting the subject; and a display unit configured to arbitrarily arrange thumbnails of the sets of image data, update and display coordinates of each of the thumbnails based on the characteristic value set of the whole image of the image data, the characteristic value set of the edge portion of the image data, the characteristic value set of the pixels constituting the subject of the image data, and the clusters of the image data determined by the cluster integration unit, calculate a shift amount of each of the thumbnails, and repeat the processing of updating and displaying the coordinates until the shift amount of each of the thumbnails is converged to 0.