US Patent 8154628 Image processing apparatus and imaging apparatus and method

An image processing apparatus (5) that corrects an input image signal (Xin) pixel by pixel to generate a corrected image signal (Xout), having a filtering means (2) that determines a luminance distribution of a pixel to be corrected and pixels neighboring the pixel to be corrected, a correction gain calculation means (3) that determines the correction gain of the pixel to be corrected, and an operation means (4) that uses the correction gain determined by the correction gain calculation means to perform an operation on the input image signal pixel by pixel. With this simple configuration, the dynamic range of the input image can be appropriately improved.