Patent Document ID: 8600126
Application ID: 12385303
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. An image processing apparatus comprising: an image obtaining device which obtains a breast image obtained by radiography of a breast; a mammary gland region extracting device which extracts a mammary gland region from the breast image; a local region setting device which scans a plurality of pixels belonging to the mammary gland region extracted by the mammary gland region extracting device and which sets a plurality of local regions including mammary gland structure and background around each of the pixels; a local contrast value calculating device which calculates a plurality of local contrast values in the local regions, such that one local contrast value is calculated for each one of the plurality of local regions set by the local region setting device in order to calculate the contrast values of the mammary gland structure in the local regions; and an image processing device which applies image processing to the breast image on the basis of a contrast value in the mammary gland of the image by calculating a contrast value in the mammary gland region by integrating the plurality of local contrast values calculated in the mammary gland region.