Patent Document ID: 8878939
Application ID: 13104231
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A subject tracking apparatus comprising: an image acquisition section that sequentially acquires image frames; a detection section that detects, from the acquired image frames, image data of a subject which is a partial area in at least one of the acquired image frames; a division section that divides the detected image data of the subject into a plurality of first areas; a specification section that specifies, based on a characteristic value of at least one of the first areas, a second area which is similar to at least one of the first areas and which is included in the acquired image frames; and a tracking section that tracks an image area as the subject in the acquired image frames; wherein the specification section comprises: a pixel value calculation section that calculates a first representative pixel value of one of the first areas and a second representative pixel value of the second area; a similarity calculation section that calculates a similarity of the second area to one of the first areas, based on the first representative pixel value and the second representative pixel value calculated by the pixel value calculation section; and a designation section that designates the second area which has the similarity equal to or larger than a first predetermined value, the similarity being calculated by the similarity calculation section, as a track candidate area to be tracked by the tracking section; and wherein the tracking section tracks the image area determined based on the track candidate area designated by the designation section.