Patent 7154541 was granted and assigned to Sony on December, 2006 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
In accordance with the present invention, a mixture ratio indicating the state of mixture of a plurality of objects such as a background image and the image of an object is detected. A pixel value setter 502 extracts background pixel data while also extracting the date of a target pixel and a pixel in the vicinity of the target pixel. The pixel value setter 502 generates a plurality of relational equations indicating data of the target pixel and the pixel in the vicinity of the target pixel and the background pixel data. An arithmetic unit 503 calculates a mixture ratio indicating a mixed state of the plurality of objects in the real world with respect to the target pixel based on the relational equations. The present invention is applicable to an image processing apparatus that accounts for a difference between a signal detected by a sensor and the real world.