Patent ID: 7986360

Claim:
An image processing apparatus comprising: restoration means for generating a restoration image based on a color-and-sensitivity mosaic image wherein each of a plurality of pixels has one of first to third color components and one of a plurality of sensitivity characteristics with respect to intensity of light, in terms of the sensitivity characteristics of the pixels, the pixels disposed in a same line have a same sensitivity characteristic, and the pixels disposed in different lines, which are adjacent to each other, have different sensitivity characteristics, in terms of the color components of the pixels, the pixels having the first color component are arranged in a checker pattern irrespective of the pixels' sensitivity characteristics, the pixels having the second color component are arranged so as to be disposed in adjacent different lines and adjacent in a diagonal direction, and the pixels having the third color component are arranged so as to be disposed in adjacent different lines and adjacent in a diagonal direction, in the restoration image, for each color component, the sensitivities of the pixels are uniformized, using as inputs (i) color mosaic pattern information, (ii) a color and sensitivity mosaic image, and (iii) sensitivity mosaic pattern information, so that each of the pixels having different sensitivity characteristics are (i) scaled to the same light intensity as the pixels having the same sensitivity characteristics to create sensitivity compensated pixel information for each of the pixels having different sensitivity characteristics and (ii) compared with a threshold value to discriminate the validity of the pixel value to create discrimination information for each of the pixels having different sensitivity characteristics, and each of the uniformized pixels has all of the plurality of color components.