Patent Document ID: 20120183227
Application ID: 13347287
Patent Status: 0

Claim One:
1. An area finding apparatus comprising: a storage unit that stores data representing a plurality of points that can be distributed at two-dimensional coordinates; an extracting unit that extracts a rectangular area having a highest score or a lowest score that is calculated based on evaluation values of points from a processing target area including a set of a plurality of points stored in the storage unit; a determining unit that determines whether or not the rectangular area extracted by the extracting unit and one or a plurality of rectangular areas overlapping a plurality of the processing target areas out of other rectangular areas extracted from other processing target areas intersect with each other, and deletes a rectangular area having a lower score or a higher score out of the rectangular areas determined to intersect with each other; a selecting unit that selects a rectangular area having a highest score or a lowest score out of the rectangular areas extracted by the extracting unit and not deleted by the determining unit; a generating unit that generates one or a plurality of rectangular areas as the processing target areas based on an area acquired by excluding the rectangular area selected by the selecting unit from the processing target area from which the rectangular area has been extracted and an area acquired by excluding the rectangular area deleted by the determining unit from the processing target area from which the rectangular area has been extracted; and a controlling unit that allows the extracting unit to extract the rectangular area from the processing target area generated by the generating unit, allows the determining unit to determine whether or not the rectangular areas intersect with each other, and allows the selecting unit to select the rectangular area until the rectangular areas corresponding to a predetermined number are selected by the selecting unit.