Object detection method, storage medium, integrated circuit, and object detection apparatus

Abstract

It is an object of the present invention to achieve an object detection apparatus, a program, and an integrated circuit each of which is capable of appropriately detecting an axially symmetric object in an image, whatever image is to be processed, without performing any complicated thresholding. The object detection apparatus includes a processing object region determination unit, a variance acquisition unit, a matching determination unit, and an object region detection unit. The processing object region determination unit sets a symmetry axis in an image region included in an image and divides the image region into a determination image region and a reference image region so as to be line symmetric with respect to the symmetry axis. The variance acquisition unit acquires a degree of variance of image feature amount in the image region. The matching determination unit acquires a matching value between the determination image region and the reference image region and determines the symmetry between the determination image region and the reference image region with respect to the symmetry axis on the basis of a corrected matching value which is obtained by correcting the acquired matching value in accordance with the degree of variance. The object region detection unit detects an image region which is line symmetric with respect to the symmetry axis on the basis of a determination result from the matching determination unit.