CONTOUR DETECTING APPARATUS

A countour detecting apparatus which comprises: a picture-data input device for the input of data on a picture including an object to be detected; a video-signal generator for scanning the data on the picture and generating video signals each corresponding to luminance of each pixel of the picture; a picture-data memory for sampling the video signals corresponding to each of two-dimensional coordinates of the pixels and storing the sampled video-signals; and a contour detector for moving a pair of a first picture section and a second picture section, which is arranged to be apart by a predetermined distance from the placed in parallel with the first picture section, in the picture stored in the picture-data memory, the countour detector also detecting the position of the first and second picture section in case where the absolute value of the difference between a first sum of the video signals stored in the picture-data memory corresponding to the pixels in the first picture section and a second sum of the video signals stored in the picture-data memory corresponding to the pixels in the second picture section is maximum. Thereby, even when a picture including an object is not clear, the contour of the object can be surely detected. Further, the period of time required for processing of detection of the contour of an object can be substantially decreased.